




/ 











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THE AUTOCRAT 


By PEARL DOLES BELL 

/• 



A. L. BURT COMPANY 
Publishers New York 

Published by arrangement with W. J. Watt & Company 
Printed in U. S. A. 









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Copyright, 192a, by 
W. J. WATT & COMPANY 


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Printed in the "United Statee of America 


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A 


THE AUTOCRAT 


CHAPTER I 

A LOG crackled sharply in the wide fireplace, fell apart 
with a little hissing sigh and grayed slowly at the 
rounded ends, while fresh flames leaped with fierce 
red lust at the virginal edges. A bronze clock on the mantel 
ticked monotonously, insistently. A chair creaked as a little 
lady in a lace shawl leaned forward to rest an elbow on her 
knees. Then again there was only the tick-tick of the 
bronze clock. 

The girl near the long windows at the opposite end of 
the room turned silently and for a moment gazed specu¬ 
latively at the little woman before the fireplace. A faint 
smile lifted the corners of her lips, and her eyebrows moved 
slightly. Her aunt was a never failing source of amusement 
to Kathryn Lambert, and just now she was smiling in 
anticipated amusement. She was wondering if the thing 
which she was about to confide would shock her aunt out 
of her many affectations into an unfamiliar naturalness. 

Mrs. Edgar Van Kemp was this minute suffering from 
the effect of an affectation, though never would she have 
admitted it. One could not be really British and at the same 
time have one’s house heated by anything but fireplaces. And 



2 


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little Mrs. Van Kemp was British, uncompromisingly 
British, if not by birth at least by adoption and absorption. 

Grate fires versus steam heat was a topic which insured 
Mrs. Van Kemp’s household against dullness and the tedious 
silences that are not unusual even in the best of families. 
It was a subject that could always be introduced when one 
did not feel mentally fit and wished to “start something. ,, 
Kathryn Lambert who made her home with the Van 
Kemps, loathed discussions about things which contributed 
to one’s comfort, but she loved comfort. Aristocratic and 
autocratic, she scorned anything so sordid as an argument, 
nevertheless she was like a queen outraged when comforts 
were denied her. 

Edgar Van Kemp on the contrary found open arguments 
so much more warming than open fireplaces, that not only 
did he find in them nothing sordid, but he courted them. 
His wife might be as British as she liked, he at least re¬ 
mained uncompromisingly and argumentatively American. 

Then there were the servants—a retinue in which Eng¬ 
land and America were about equally represented. And there 
were the friends who romanced about fireplaces and the 
friends who—to use Van Kemp’s exact expression—“goose- 
fleshed” at mention of any but the most adequate of heating 
systems. But little Mrs. Van Kemp remained mistress of 
her house. Than be a plebeianistic American she would 
rather have pneumonia in both lungs. 

The Van Kemp living-room was long and low-ceilinged. 
Its show of splendor and “indecently new” furnishings were 
softened and prematurely aged by the flickering light of the 
log fire. There being to-night no other light in the room, 
the leaping flames seemed to find gleeful delight in the gro¬ 
tesque shadows which danced fantastically against the walls. 

Mrs. Van Kemp glanced cautiously up at her niece. The 



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3 


girl’s face was turned once more toward the frosted window, 
and the little lady indulged in a long repressed shiver andl 
held out her hands imploringly to the logs. 4 i 

The figure of the girl stirred, crossed the room to the^ 
fireplace and stretched a slender arm along the onyx mantel..’ 

“It’s rather a bad night out, and it’s not,” a faint flicker] 
of mischief flashed like a firelight shadow across her face,,- 
“what one would call a perfectly good night within. I am* 
afraid, Estelle dear, that you are too thinly clad for this 
temperature. Now flannels would-” 1 

“I am quite comfortable, thank you.” The older woman 
frowned and a flush suffused her thin white skin. “Though 
it is a beastly night, isn’t it ?” 

“About the beastliest of the season. It looks out there,” 
the younger woman indicated the window, “as if the earth 
were to be completely blanketed—utterly obliterated by that 
blinding, swirling monster that is so deceptively soft and 
white.” 

“Ugh!” Mrs. Van Kemp shuddered. “You have the un* 
kindest imagination, Kathryn.” 

“Have I?” The girl laughed softly. “I wonder,” her 
lovely head tipped speculatively to one side, “just how unkind 
it is going to be to me.” 

Mrs. Van Kemp pursed her delicately rouged lips. Purs¬ 
ing one’s lips was a convincing way of simulating thought^ 
And Kathryn did have such a terrifying habit of talking 
a little beyond one. j 

“I’m sure you might do well to teach your imagination 
to do less—less hurdling.” Little Mrs. Van Kemp glowed. 
Hurdling was quite an inspiration and it was so undeniably 
English. 

“If it isn’t kind to me—there is the Lambert pride to salve 
my hurt.” Mrs. Van Kemp’s inspiration had missed itg 


4 THE AUTOCRAT 

mark. “I’m afraid Fm a bit selfish, just a bit like you, 
auntie dear.” 

Mrs. Van Kemp winced. Always she had stood a little 
in awe of this tall young daughter of her husband’s dead 
sister. 

“Why the ‘auntie dear’ ?” She chose as always to ignore 
a jeer from the gallery. Anything that did not quite appeal 
to Mrs. Van Kemp was from the gallery. 

The girl shrugged her shoulders, looked down into the 
other woman’s face with a provocative smile and answered 
naively, her voice which was marvelously low and sweet, 
contrasting delightfully with the high pitched, petulant voice 
of her aunt-in-law. 

“You are always ‘auntie/ when I feel that one of us needs 
a scolding. I think we both need it to-night.” 

“I was not aware that so superior a being as Kathryn 
Lambert ever needed scolding.” 

“She doesn’t need it often and when she does,” the girl 
extended one slim hand and holding it against the firelight, 
gazed at the thin red lines which showed between the slender 
fingers, “fate scolds her and, astonishing as it may seem, fate 
appears to be immune to all her charms and artifices. Fate 
is such a merciless tyrant, isn’t she?” 

Mrs. Van Kemp shivered. 

“Kathryn, you’re positively weird. It isn’t so much what 
you are saying as—as what you are leaving unsaid. Why, 
I can see your dreadful old fate slinking about over there 
in that murky corner.” 

There was a faint ripple of girlish laughter, not altogether 
skeptical. 

“I had thought it was close at hand to-night. Shall I 
tell you what I am about to do for which fate may scold me?” 

Estelle Van Kemp shrank deeper into her big arm chair. 


THE AUTOCRAT 


5 


“No!” She held up a jeweled hand imploringly. “I 
don’t wish you to tell me anything when you are in this 
devil-may-care mood. You’ve given me a chill as it is.” 

“If you’ve a chill, Estelle, you’ve only your lack of civil¬ 
ized heating devices to blame for it, but we shall not bring 
forth that particular family skeleton to-night. There is some¬ 
thing of greater importance to be discussed.” There was a 
pause that was oddly like a whimsical smile, though the 
corners of the girl’s lips gave no evidence of lifting. “I have 
decided to marry.” 

Estelle Van Kemp drew one foot slowly from under her 
and sat rigidly upright. 

“Kathie dear! Really!” She reached for Kathryn’s 
free hand which happened to be just a few inches too far 
away. “Do tell me about it!” 

Kathryn Lambert’s gaze left Mrs. Van Kemp’s eager 
face and drifted round the shadowy room. It came at last 
to rest on an ivory miniature that was but the length of a 
hand from her elbow on the onyx mantel. A pair of sea 
blue eyes very like her own looked back at her from 
the miniature, and for the space of a minute mother and 
daughter gazed tenderly at each other across the abyss which 
separates the dead from the living. ' 

Kathryn Lambert’s mother had been the petted idol of 
a large family of which she was the youngest member. With 
five brothers and no sisters it was but natural that she should 
learn to swim as far and ride as hard as any one of the 
five brothers who were her slaves. 

The strenuous sports of the great outdoors filled her life 
until she came to the moment of her debut. It was then 
that a new game was added to her repertoire. Innocently 
but with no lesser degree of enthusiasm than that which she 
displayed in her other games, she became an amateur husband 


6 THE AUTOCRAT 

hunter, with every chance of becoming a professional in a 
very short while. 

She hunted as hard as she rode and swam, and she did 
it as unconsciously and as delightfully. She could not have 
told you just why she liked to feel her slim young body 
sliding through the water nor could she have defined or 
described her enjoyment of riding. And so it was with the 
husband hunting. She did not know why men without 
worldly means failed to attract her. She did not know why 
the prospect of marriage fascinated her. She knew simply 
that she loved glamour—victory, and vaguely she felt that 
finding and marrying the right man, the man who could 
best supply the glamour, would be winning the game . 

Of suitors there were many but either the quality or the 
quantity of their proffered glamour failed to please her until 
cynical Jack Lambert’s crossed her orbit. Jack Lambert had 
city houses and country houses, stables and kennels, and 
worlds and worlds of money. He was a Virginian and the 
girl tried to believe that it was his soft Southern drawl which 
attracted her. 

They were married and several unborn Lamberts were sac¬ 
rificed to the young wife’s love for hard riding. Once in 
an open field on the Virginia estate, they had picked her 
up on the wrong side of a hurdle where she had fallen from 
her horse, and carried her, unconscious in her gay red hunt¬ 
ing coat and shining black boots, to the great colonial house 
a mile away. An hour later a tiny premature atom of 
humanity had made its debut into the world and had gone as 
suddenly out of it. 

It was after this that the young wife learned to know the 
sterner side of her husband’s character. Perhaps it was be¬ 
cause she liked the novelty that she obeyed when he com¬ 
manded. Two years later Kathryn was born. A thin, 


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7 


half dead infant who seemed to catch hold of life only when 
Chloe, the nurse, filled the tiny lungs with air from her own 
black breast. 

“Ah dess blowed gentle-like intuh huh mouf an’ Lor’ 
bress you! She done open huh eyes. Ain’t it de trufe dat 
de chile hab got de breaf of mah life in huh angel body?” 
Chloe never tired of telling this, and Kathryn Lambert had 
always been her old black mammy’s angel child. 

When Kathryn’s father died his widow took Kathryn 
and a retinue of servants to Paris where, with a reckless 
hand she bought the glamour and the excitement she so loved. 
When Kathryn was eighteen they returned to America, and 
it was about this time that Kathryn’s share in the Lam¬ 
bert estate began to follow in the wake of her mother’s. Jack 
Lambert had made no provision for the protection of his 
widow and child against reckless extravagances, pits made 
attractive by promises of greater wealth, unprincipled lawyers 
and agents. There had been no restrictions in his will. And 
since there remained living but one of the five brothers with 
whom Kathryn’s mother had ridden through her youth, 
and he too adoring to strenuously interfere, securities and 
real estate holdings were converted one way and another into 
social triumphs. Then one day the reckless little widow ran 
her racing car over an embankment ... It was the sort of 
end everybody had always predicted for her. For months 
following the tragedy, her orphaned daughter seemed unable 
to realize that the gay little butterfly whose wings had flut¬ 
tered so incessantly was still at last. 

Of the vast Lambert fortune there remained for Kathryn 
the pittance of an income and the country estate in Virginia. 
Edgar Van Kemp, her mother’s surviving brother, insisted 
that she make her home with him, and after another year 
abroad and a season in Virginia, she had taken up her abode 


8 


THE AUTOCRAT 


with the Van Kemps. Edgar Van Kemp became very fond 
of her, and because Kathryn was a Lambert of Virginia, 
Estelle Van Kemp looked upon her as a most valuable social 
asset, and was no end proud of her. 

Kathryn was an unusual person in that she was not afraid 
to look her life squarely in the face and acknowledge its 
defects. Poverty or near poverty was its most twisted 
feature, and more than once she had shocked Estelle by the 
cool, proud manner in which she had discussed its ugliness 
and the possible ways in which it might be corrected. 
Surgeons straightened crooked noses. Marriage might be 
made to perform miracles with an empty check book. Of 
course, there were business careers, and it was true as Estelle 
pointed out, that many women of the English peerage had 

gone into trade, but a Lambert of Virginia - And with 

a thin smile of disdain, Kathryn had banished trade. 

Marriage, then, remained the most possible of all the pos¬ 
sible means of correcting her financial condition, and it was 
not to be wondered at that Estelle Van Kemp sat suddenly 
upright at Kathryn’s announcement that she had decided to 
marry. Breathlessly she caught Kathryn away from the 
miniature. 

“Who is he, Kathryn ?” 

“John Harrington.” 

“Kathryn!” After a slight pause: “When did he ask 
you?” 

The girl smiled nonchalantly down at her aunt, her eyes 
half closed. 

“He has not asked me—yet.” 

Mrs. Van Kemp gasped and sank back in her chair with 
a tremulous sigh. 

“And to think,” she communed aloud to herself, “that I 


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9 


am the aunt by marriage to anything so impregnated with 
conceit!” 

When one’s outraged sense of dignity demanded no less 
than a pose of pained resignation, it was most annoying to 
be the victim of one’s curiosity. But of course, she must 
know the details. 

“Will you advise the gentleman as to your decision before 
you announce your engagement to him?” 

“I think that would be the fair and proper thing. Don’t 
you ?” 

Mrs. Van Kemp groaned. 

“Fair! Proper! My dear, I-” 

“Seriously, Estelle,” once more the blue eyes half closed 
and the long dark lashes screened them, “I must marry some 
day, and of course I must marry money—lots and lots of 
money. I have been so well trained in the science of making 
two dollars do the work of one.” The blue eyes lifted with 
tender apology to the miniature on the mantel. 

“And the man?” Estelle’s voice was expressionless. 

Kathryn Lambert shrugged her shoulders and ran the 
pink tips of her tapering fingers down the satiny surface of 
her slender white throat. 

“Mr. Harrington will marry me for what I have to give 
him. Were I less beautiful, less clever, less well-born, do 
you think John Harrington would look with so much in¬ 
terest at my face or listen so attentively to my slightest 
word?” 

From most women this would have been proof of a tre¬ 
mendous egotism. When Kathryn Lambert said it, it be¬ 
came merely a voiced fact. She was such a radiantly lovely 
creature and open homage had so long been hers, that her 
knowledge of her beauty and charm could scarcely be called 
vanity. She would have had to be deaf and blind from in- 


10 


THE AUTOCRAT 


fancy to have remained unconscious of her loveliness. Had 
those around her been mute, their eyes would have told her 
what their lips could not. Then too, there was always her 
mirror. She knew the value of her many charms and not 
one of them was ever allowed to rust through lack of use. 
The one difference between her and most other beautiful 
women, lay in the fact that she was whimsically frank about 
the knowledge of her power, frank at least with herself. 

She was past mistress of all the little artifices with which 
women for ages have sharpened their arrows. She knew for 
example just what emotion could be kindled in the mascu¬ 
line breast, by the challenge in the lifting of an eyebrow. 
And she knew just what sort of man would delight in the 
challenge without taking advantage of it, even as she knew 
the type of man who was most easily enslaved by the shy 
drooping of her white eyelids—the demure screening of her 
azure eyes. There was an odd, tremulous smile that be¬ 
longed to the soft music which always accompanies the sad 
moment of the drama. And there was the provocative, 
quizzical smile that set romance to jazz. 

Noting that the effect of her artifices was similar to that 
attained by music, Kathryn had mentally dubbed these arti¬ 
fices “heart measures.” Rather whimsically she came to look 
upon herself as an instrument—well varnished, polished and 
in perfect tune, but without her skilled playing, of no greater 
interest than a beautifully finished piano when its keys are 
untouched, its wires silent. She watched other women prac¬ 
ticing their more or less innocent hokum, and wondered how 
many of them like herself, played their “heart measures” con¬ 
sciously. 


CHAPTER II 


“T)UT, Kathie,”—Mrs. Van Kemp began most of her 

I) sentences with but, believing that that word would 
cover all that was required of an aunt-by-marriage 
when arguments with Kathryn seemed to be the thing in 
order,—“you have not said that you love Mr. Harrington. 
Don’t you think you ought to be er—in—love with him?” 
The little lady spoke very softly and with no rising inflec¬ 
tion. She was terribly disturbed. Between the conscience 
that made her argue the subject and the fear that her argu¬ 
ments might convince , Estelle Van Kemp was most uneasy. 

Dropping her arm from the chimneypiece with a ges¬ 
ture of weariness, Kathryn moved slowly across the room, 
mechanically kicking back as she went, the upturned corner 
of a Persian rug. 

“Love?” She paused and turned her head. In the faint 
light her face looked pale and cold. “What has love to do 
with marriage? Don’t lift your hand to silence me. You 
do not mean it and you know you do not. You married Edgar 
Van Kemp the same day he asked you. You were a clerk 
in his father’s office. Pardon me,” the girl’s voice softened 
as she saw the woman across the room wince as from a blow. 
“I have no wish to rattle the bones of any particular skeleton 
jut I should like you to look at a number of them. The 
first one is packed away with your marriage certificate. You 
were not in love with anything at the time you married my 
uncle, but the prospect of a luxurious future. You told me 
this yourself at the time you became converted to the second 
previous religion to the one of which you are now a devotee. 
I was your unwilling confessor, you remember. 


ii 


12 


THE AUTOCRAT 


“That you love Edgar Van Kemp now, is proof that one 
such marriage, at least, was not a failure. Then there are 
all your friends and mine. How many of them marry be¬ 
cause they love the person they choose as a partner? The 
man wants a woman who will not cause to depreciate the 
value which he attaches to his name, and who will bring 
forth children that would not put to shame any man less 
exacting than George Bernard Shaw. If he finds such a 
woman appeals also to his flesh and to his soul, then he is 
doubly fortunate and happy. The women marry social po¬ 
sition or money. 

“It sounds rather ugly when it’s put into words, doesn’t 
it? But you know, Estelle, that it is true. Of course there 
is always the exception to the rule, but how many of those 
exceptions can you name offhand?” The girl looked defi¬ 
antly at her aunt. But that little lady’s only answer was 
a sigh of hopelessness which was meant to convey to her 
niece her sorrowful abandonment of the argument. She con¬ 
sidered as shameful and revolting, the challenge thus tossed 
at her. This niece of her husband was very trying at times. 

“Mr. Harrington loses no opportunity to be with me,” 
went on the girl. “He has been on the point of declaring 
himself several times and I have averted the issue. I needed 
time to weigh the pros and cons of a marriage with him. 
My dear, don’t look so shocked!” 

“Of course, Mr. Harrington is unbelievably rich,” con¬ 
ceded the mistress of the house, pretending to labor under 
slow conviction. “He is very rich and is going to be even 
richer according to Edgar. He has no family and no his¬ 
tory, so far as the most curious have been able to discover, 
but these mushroom men with their mushroom fortunes will 
spring up amongst us and occasionally one of them carries 
off a fair debutante whose family is proud and old and whose 
immediate or personal history has been carefully supervised 
in the making, by governesses, family and friends.” 

Kathryn Lambert’s supple young figure stiffened. 


THE AUTOCRAT 


*3 

John Harrington had neither family nor history so far 
as she or anyone else knew. Her aunt was right. It was 
but a few years ago that John Harrington had first been 
heard from. She recalled the story distinctly. He had 
plunged into a fight with the sugar trust. Everybody had 
laughed, everybody except the sugar trust. The members 
of that organization might have laughed too, had they known 
just who their antagonist was and what weapons he would 
use. When weapons are not kept hidden until the last mo¬ 
ment, there is alwaj^s the chance to blunt the points or to 
replace loaded cartridges with blank ones, thus insuring a 
shower of ridicule for the antagonist when his weapons mis¬ 
carry. 

Somehow, diligent as had been the sleuths of the sugar 
trust, John Harrington and his weapons remained equally 
mysterious. True, they discovered that he owned and oper¬ 
ated a toy factory, which he had bought during the last year 
of the World War, but this discovery told them less than 
nothing. It added, in fact, to the man’s aura of mystery. A 
toy factory and Harrington were not compatible. A toy fac¬ 
tory, indeed! The thing was incongruous! In all proba¬ 
bility it was a part of the man’s strategy. It was meant to 
lead them astray. How could a toy factory give the slightest 
clue to the history or the resources of the man who would 
fight a trust. 

That John Harrington did have resources and powerful 
weapons was proved by the outcome of that fight. For 
months after his victory, newspapers that had laughed with 
the world at the gnat attacking the elephant, printed his name 
in large black headlines, whenever there happened to be a 
dearth of sensational news. Then suddenly the busy press 
discovered that society was lionizing him. All society, that 
is, except the part made up of ex-sugar-trust men and their 
dependents. The press was delighted. John Harrington 
was and would always be a magnet for the press. It was 
not so much the power of the man which excited interest, 


14 


THE AUTOCRAT 


but rather the intriguing mystery that veiled him. He nevei* 
refused to be interviewed, but reporters told their chiefs that 
it was like interviewing the sphinx. He would make no 
single statement that could be used as a germ for even a 
column and a half by the most efficient and imaginative 
space writer. Perhaps it was the things he did not say that 
piqued the worthy men of the press and kept them working 
like beavers to get a story out of John Harrington. They 
interviewed him upon every pretext and always with the 
same futility. 

Just what was the reason that John Harrington sent these 
news seeking men away from his office with nothing gained 
was another of the mysteries that attracted them. That 
it was not a pose they knew. There was a simplicity 
about the man that forbade the most suspicious to call 
him a poseur. That his objection to expressing himself was 
not altogether a matter of diplomacy was assured by the fact 
that he worked untiringly though quietly for the people 
and what he considered their rights with not a care for the 
men he fought. Inadvertently he had once said: “I believe 
we should talk less and do more. Less deduction and more 
production.” The press had made much of that. In fact 
it had worn the latter phrase threadbare. It had sufficed for 
whole pages in the Sunday issues, with pictures of the man, 
bis houses—city and country—his motors, and a long rehash 
of how he had “smashed single-handed, the most powerful 
trust in the country.” 

The press accentuated and enlarged upon the mysterious- 
ness of the man, though it did it most delicately —sometimes 
by the clever use of an interrogation mark, sometimes by a 
series of dashes. To a girl of Kathryn Lambert’s character 
all this was extremely distasteful. A series of interrogation 
points and little black lines swam round Mrs. Van Kemp’s 
niece now as she stood there in the center of the former’s 
drawing-room. Her lips smiled, but then Kathryn Lambert’s 





THE AUTOCRAT 


IS 

lips were obedient and could always smile when she so bade 
them. 

“Granted,” she said at last, “that the man’s past and the 
social status of his family are unknown to us. Still, don’t 
you think any man is a gentleman about whom the most 
curious have been able to find nothing that would reflect 
discredit on his unpretentious name?” The velvety blue eyes 
were turned toward the fire as she spoke and it was as though 
she were trying to convince herself of the merit in her theory, 
for her aunt had risen with a little sound of protest, and she 
had taken no notice. 

“As for lineage—Mr. Harrington might follow, if he liked, 
the example set by some of the very smartest of our smart 
set. For a few of his many dollars he can have a genealogy 
as long and as interesting as the longest and most inter¬ 
esting.” 

Mrs. Van Kemp glanced at the face turned toward the 
fire and, since the blue eyes could not see, she permitted a 
spark of her happiness to light up her own features. She 
was intensely relieved. She had hoped big things for her 
husband’s niece but nothing as big as John Harrington. 
That John Harrington would fall in with the plan, the lady 
never for a moment doubted. 

“I suppose you believe in eugenics?” 

Kathryn started and looked round at the speaker as if 
she had forgotten her presence. 

“Eugenics ? Yes. I—I think I do. At least, I have read 
Shaw. It has something”— she hesitated and her clear eyes 
wavered—“something to do with children, hasn’t it?” 

Mrs. Van Kemp was not sure just what the subject cov¬ 
ered but she had heard it discussed by some women at her 
club and she felt quite safe in acknowledging that eugenics 
had something to do with children. 

“Don’t you think there is plenty of time to—consider this 
eugenic question after-” the girl did not finish but looked 


i6 THE AUTOCRAT 

“back into the fire, her poise more shaken than ever her aunt 
bad seen it. 

“I understand that it is a subject requiring consideration 
before -” Estelle Van Kemp tactfully left her own sen¬ 

tence unfinished. “But of course it is only another fad of 
the moment and I dare say that any consideration would 
flatter it.” She had been most unwise to introduce into the 
-discussion a subject such as eugenics. The girl might take 
the rot seriously, and Mrs. Van Kemp was not at all sure 
on which side of the fence that would put her clever young 
niece. She patted back a yawn and moved toward the door. 

“Good night, my dear. I’m beastly fatigued.” 

The girl lifted her head and smiled her good night. 

Her aunt soliloquized: “Well, I did my duty but girls 
are headstrong and if she wants to marry John Harrington 
no protest of mine could alter her determination.” The 
little mistress of the house made her way slowly up the 
broad stairs. At the top she paused and gazed thoughtfully 
back at the living-room door. 

“Dear! Dear! I do hope she forgets about eugenics. I 
must look up the subject. John Harrington! Fancy!” 

Kathryn Lambert stood a long time in the center of the 
room, her eyes fixed on the embers of the dying fire. The 
logs had burned through and were disintegrating, the fire 
needed replenishing, but the blue eyes saw something else 
-—something that had nothing to do with this room and this 
fireplace. 

The embers sputtered and were silent. Hissed and were 
silent. They crackled and crumbled—turned gray, then 
white, then of a sudden they glowed, red as the heart of a 
ruby. A chill crept into the air. The mercury in the small 
silver mounted thermometer on the mantel (the mistress of 
the house kept it there because it was the only spot in the 
room where it ever made a creditable showing) dropped 
slowly down toward the bulb at its base. Unconsciously the 
girl drew her lacy shawl closer about her bare shoulders. 


THE AUTOCRAT 


*7 


It was just as the last faint glow had died leaving the 
remains of a once sprightly fire wrapped in a soft white ash, 
that Kathryn became conscious of the sounds to which her 
subjective mind had long been attentive. She bent her head 
a little to one side, listening. 

There was a gentle, almost inaudible tapping at the big 
front windows. It was faint and irregular but nevertheless 
insistent like the tapping of tiny fingers. 

Kathryn Lambert shivered and drew her shawl still closer 
about her. Involuntarily she turned to the end of the room 
—that end facing the river—where the two windows looked 
back at her—like a pair of accusing eyes. Fascinatedly she 
moved toward them, and a bit nervously she drew back the 
filet curtains. Then she laughed. 

The huge flakes of snow that had been falling earlier in 
the evening had given way to sleet. And the icy fingers of 
the storm were beating against the half-frosted window panes. 
Outside lay a white blanketed world. The gaunt trees on 
the opposite side of the street reached their naked limbs 
stiffly toward the river, shaking off a crust of ice with their 
shivering, and looking at them Kathryn felt small and un¬ 
important, empty and inconsequential. She lifted her head 
defiantly, remembering that she was a Lambert of Virginia, 
an aristocrat, a thoroughbred! But the remembrance did not 
comfort her or reinstate her to her rightful position in the 
scheme of things. 

“It’s perfectly absurd that Estelle’s prattle should topple 
me into such a mood. I’m positively abject! And all be¬ 
cause an unthinking little woman has talked a bit of rot 
about love and —babies 

She looked admonishingly back across her shoulder, at 
some specter that would not be convinced, then rather hur¬ 
riedly she turned back to the window. 

The river was little more than a vague gray line with 
here and there the fitful glimmer of a red light. The street 
lamp across the way was but a ghastly yellow spot, sleet 


i8 


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blurred. An automobile shot recklessly into view, skidded, 
just missed the curbing, and disappeared. A lone figure, 
muffled in a long flapping coat and bent to the wind, made 
its way cautiously along the walk in front of the house* 
clinging temporarily to the things it passed, a lamp post, a 
low wall, a tree—the feet slipping and uncertain, the body 
tense with strained muscles, and then it, too, was gone, 
leaving once more deserted the street that in fair weather 
could boast so many proud equipages, so many gay pedes¬ 
trians. 

Kathryn Lambert turned abruptly from the window with 
something between a sigh and a laugh. 

“I wonder if, after all, it pays to be so honest with one¬ 
self.” She looked moodily round the room. “Introspection, 
self-analysis—they’re quite like breaking the doll to dis¬ 
cover what makes its eyes close. If I were not a self- 
acknowledged pirate, all the nasty accusing little things could 
not hurt me. I shouldn’t be conscious of them. I’d be 
merely Kathryn the insouciant—Kathryn the unafraid— 
Kathryn the gay buccaneer.” Again she lifted her head 
with characteristic pride. “But they shan’t frighten me 

off. It is not as if he were to be cheated. Not as if- 

as if I were not worth what he will pay. It is going to be 
less easy than I had thought, but not for nothing am I 
descended from a stock of thoroughbreds who knew how to 
play the game and how to win.” 

Insistently tapping baby fingers and insinuating question 
marks controlled her dreams once she had fallen asleep. But 
daylight has a way of dispersing the troubles that assail us 
in the dark of the night, and morning found Kathryn 
Lambert her usual exquisite self, calm and perfectly poised. 

Clad in a smart walking suit, sable scarf and small hat, 
she left the house early and swung off through the sunlight 
between busy snow shovelers and long ridges of snow, on a 
trip to her tailor’s. She disdained a motor on a morning 
like this. There seemed to be an affinity between her and the 



THE AUTOCRAT 


cool crisp air, the clear blue sky, the pale gold sunlight. 
Never was a Diana more alluring. Never a Diana more 
•dangerous. 

It was not strange that thought of Diana should come 
to her, as she swung onto Fifth Avenue and caught a reflec¬ 
tion of herself in a plate glass shop window. It was a fitting 
conclusion to the thoughts that had preceded it. 

“Man hunter!” she laughed indulgently. “Shamelessly 
honest man hunter! Well,” her gaze wandered off to the 
procession of motor cars filing past her in the street, “the 
world is filled with huntresses though not all game is worth 
bagging. Too, the best quarry is apt to be doubly shy from 
having been so much shot at.” 

For an instant a faint flush colored her cheeks, and her 
heart decried her. Such musings, such ideas were vulgar! 
She had not really meant— Her slim feet came to a sudden 
stop. 

Her wandering gaze had clashed into tragedy! A speed¬ 
ing motor had run down a young woman not six feet from 
her, and had disappeared round the corner before anyone 
could either stop it or think to get its number. There was 
a rush of hot fury through the heart that but a moment be¬ 
fore had been so cool and calculating, a flood of—something 
which she would have been loath to call pity, burst its way 
through the dam of autocracy and—— Kathryn Lambert 
was in the street beside the prostrate form of a shabbily 
dressed young woman. 

A crowd closed in upon the scene. There were many 
voices—she remembered afterward some of the comments 
that at the time beat unheeded upon her ears. Then a 
policeman came, and it was his remark that splintered 
through her stunned emotions. 

“Crossin’ the street in the middle of the block! Sure, if 
she’d a been mindin’ the law, she’d not be going off now to 
the morgue or a hospital.” 

Kathryn’s lithe, young body went tense, she did not pause 



20 


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in her mechanical chafing of the lifeless hands of the girl 
beside whom she was kneeling, but her head reared back 
imperiously, and her blue eyes swept white hot scorn across 
the florid face of authority. 

“Are such remarks part of your duty? Get a doctor and 
clear away this crowd of morbids.” 

The officer of the law recognized his superiors when he 
saw them, though it was no small humiliation to be criti¬ 
cized in the presence of fifty or more persons. He made an 
effort to preserve his dignity. 

“Now, listen, miss! I takes me orders-” 

“Thanks!” Kathryn’s smile was enough to make him 
dizzy, and when a snicker of suppressed laughter rippled 
through the crowd, he turned with a belligerent frown and 
a wave of his club. 

“Get back, the lot of you! Get back, before I cave in 
your heads!” 

Kathryn turned once more to the still little figure on 
the pavement and a shiver ran through her. A tiny stream 
of blood was trickling from the girl’s colorless lips. Already 
there was a small pool of it on the wet pavement. 

She felt herself sway dizzily, felt her throat go oddly 
tight and her hands fall inert to her sides. She made a 
valiant effort to fight off the vertigo, dully angry that her 
poise should be so shaken, but for once pride failed her. 

“Can I be of assistance, Miss Lambert?” 

The words came to her from a great distance and they 
were meaningless, but the voice itself—the voice was- 

Order came rushing back out of chaos. 

John Harrington! John Harrington! The voice belonged 
to - 

The man bending above her started. Her white face 
frightened him. 

“Miss Lambert! Are you, too, hurt? What is it? What 
has happened?” 

Kathryn smiled faintly and tried to shake her head. 




THE AUTOCRAT 


21 


“It’s the other one,” volunteered one of the curious who 
eluding the policeman’s brandishing club, had edged eagerly 
back to the thinned group in the street. “Knocked down by 

a automobile. If she’d obeyed the lawr-” 

Harrington beckoned to the driver of the limousine from 
which he had just stepped, and without further words lifted 
the apparently lifeless woman from the wet asphalt and placed 
her in the chauffeur’s arms. There seemed to be no need 
of words between master and man. 

“And the lady with the furs, she runs out from the side¬ 
walk and she tries to order everybody-” 

John Harrington pushed the speaker aside. There was 
neither contempt nor impatience in his manner as he did it, 
and looking at him, Kathryn, who had managed to get 
to her feet, thought that with just such ease would he put 
from his path anything which might in the least displease 
him. How big he was! How unhurriedly swift of move¬ 
ment. He had the easy grace of a panther. 

His eyes came back to her and as they met and held her 
gaze, she seemed to float toward him, though she knew that 
she did not move. She felt his arms about her—felt him 
lift her clear of the street and carry her as if she were a 
child, to his car. Then they two were seated together, the 
injured woman stretched out on the cushion between them. 

She tried to think but thoughts rushed upon each other, 
confusedly overlapping. She knew only that the purr of the 
limousine’s motor was defending her—arguing against the 
conditions which had accustomed her to the purring of limou¬ 
sines only to rob her of them. 

Luxury! The purring spelled luxury! And she—she 
could not live without luxury! Poverty! This poor girl 
here beside her, knew poverty—she was perhaps used to it— 
didn’t mind it! She could afford to marry for love! Afford 

to have children! While she—Kathryn Lambert- 

“ . . . and it was splendid of you!” John Harrington 
was leaning tenderly toward her, his dark eyes on her face- 



22 


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She wondered vaguely if she were much mussed. Them 
she smiled faintly at the little vanity. 

After a moment: 

“Do you think she—she’s badly hurt?” she touched the 
lifeless hands of the girl whose dark head she had reluctantly 
pillowed against her shoulder. 

John Harrington did not take his eyes from her face, 
and for a moment he appeared to be thinking only of her. 
Then: 

“I’m afraid so. We’ll have her at the hospital in a minute 
or two. . . . The thing has upset you, Miss Lambert. You’re 
still trembling. I’m glad I saw you there. I—I had thought 
you might be—well, not quite what you are!” 

Kathryn dropped the limp hands which she had been 
gently rubbing between her two gloved palms, and her brows 
arched quizzically. She was selfish. Indifferent to the suf¬ 
ferings of others. But how dared he intimate that he had 
thought her lacking in anything. It did not occur to her 
at the moment, that she would have resented no less, an 
intimation that he had thought her more humane than he 
now believed her to be. 

He could believe her to be selfish or he could believe her 
to be maudlin, so long as he did not put the thing into 
words. Criticism was new to her, and it offended her. 

On the top floor of a midtown hospital, when the injured 
woman was being prepared for examination, Kathryn stood 
by white and trembling. For the first time in her life she 
felt a faint interest in one of O. Henry’s poor. Always 
she had wondered why O. Henry had chosen so many of his 
characters from the sordid world of poverty. What mattered 
the lives, the loves, the ambitions, of such persons? Who 
cared about the comedies or the tragedies of the proletariat— 
the shabby, unmanicured sweatshop workers, who had neither 
education nor ancestry? 

Now, however, vague interest for this daughter of the 
poor stirred in her heart. The hunter kills his wild fowl 


THE AUTOCRAT 


23 


without mercy, but let him find a wounded or a sick duck, 
hiding away in the swamp grass, and he will carry it back 
to camp and nurse it with tenderest care. Something of this 
thought came to Kathryn as she bent over the girl whose eyes 
had slowly opened. 

“You were run down by a car. I—we brought you here— 
to the hospital/’ she explained. “Shall I notify your fam¬ 
ily?” her voice was strangely unsteady. 

The fluttering eyelids closed. 

“I—I haven’t—any.” The words were scarcely audible. 

The nurse glanced significantly at the door, and Kathryn 
nodded. Leaning over until her breath stirred the hair on 
the damp marble-like forehead, she whispered: 

“I’ll come back again this afternoon. If you don’t mind,” 
she hesitated, wondering a little at the thing within her which 
was clamoring to be said, “I’d like to be your friend—until 
you are well.” 

The waxen lids lifted again, and once more the dark eyes 
wandered over Kathryn’s face. A faint smile touched the 
corners of the blood streaked lips, and all the way down in 
the elevator, that twisted smile hurt Kathryn’s throat. 

John Harrington was waiting for her in the long tiled 
corridor and as he made inquiry about the girl upstairs, he 
looked so steadily into her moist eyes, that Kathryn felt 
his thoughts. He was seeing her as an administering angel 1 
He was endowing her with a halo! 

She glanced with a shiver of revulsion up and down the 
long corridor, recalling the corridor on the floor above, 
where doors opened and closed without sound and white- 
capped nurses hurried hither and thither in answer to the 
tinkle of a bell or a half muffled moan. She shuddered. And 
again she knew that John Harrington had misunderstood, 
for he laid his hand reverently on her arm and drew her 
toward the wide glass doors. 

Outside on the shallow stone steps, she turned to him 
defensively. 


t 4 THE AUTOCRAT 

“I was never in a hospital before* The experience Has 
left me rather ilL” 

“It’s because you’re a woman,” the man nodded to his 
chauffeur who had taken the car to the other side of the 
street, “with a woman’s tender sympathies.” 

“Civilization has done her best to ruin the real you, Miss 
Lambert, but it hasn’t quite succeeded.” 

“If you mean,” Kathryn knew as she spoke that she was 
jeopardizing with her candor, her share in the game she had 
meant to play with this man, but some perverse vanity 
within her demanded that John Harrington should want 
her for her beauty, her breeding and her social position, and 
not because he thought she was good! any plebeian might 
be good—“that civilization has tried to make me intolerant of 
the sordid and failed in its attempt, you are very much mis¬ 
taken, Mr. Harrington. I hate all ugliness!” 

“Of course you do!” He was helping her into the heated 
limousine. “For so many generations you have known noth¬ 
ing but the beautiful. Flowers in hot houses have small 
acquaintance with weeds.” 

Kathryn looked thoughtfully down at his bared head as he 
tucked a mink rug about her feet. Then sighing contentedly 
at touch of the expensive fur robe, and insinuating herself 
still farther under its caressing folds, she remembered with 
a soothing sense of satisfaction that she had decided to marry 
this John Harrington. 

“I know a quaint little chop house where I’m sure they 
can brew tea as well as they broil chops. It is nearly 
luncheon time. If you have no appointment to hurry you 
away, we might-” 

“Take me!” Kathryn reached her two hands slightly 
toward him, palms up. 

It was an expressive gesture, the kind of gesture that can 
fire a man’s blood, and Kathryn wondered at the temerity 
which had tempted her to accompany it with those two in¬ 
viting words. She thought Harrington’s face went a little 


THE AUTOCRAT 


pale, but when after giving hi3 chauffeur an order, he stepped 
into the car and seated himself beside her, he was the usual* 
impassive John Harrington. 

Already the experience which had left her a little shaken* 
seemed very remote to Kathryn—the hospital and its new 
patient had given place in her mind to thoughts of herself* 

She had not wanted to marry, at least not just yet. Play* 
ing with life was so delightful. Playing with love was even 
more delightful. But her income had dwindled suddenly 
to nothing, and she could no more live without luxuries than 

she could live without air. As for John Harrington- 

But her obliging conscience made no point for argument. 
She might of course, at some later time, change her mind 
about marrying this mysterious John Harrington. If she; 
did, well, he would have to release her from her promise.. 
Her small chin lifted arrogantly. Proud, selfish, exquisite 
creature! Always her promises had been subservient to her 
wishes. Never had she allowed the fulfilling of a promise 
to inconvenience her. If keeping faith with it meant the 
least discomfort for her, the self-preservation law was a 
splendid defense as against her avowed policy of fair play. 

And for all this she was not altogether to blame. From 
earliest infancy she had been trained in the ways of despot¬ 
ism, and in her autocratic maturity those who knew her gave 
her her way as her right. They might regret the fact that 
Kathryn Lambert had been so unmitigatedly spoiled, but 
they could not resist the charm of her, nor could they be 
angry at her for permitting them to further spoil her. In¬ 
deed, it is not improbable that there were those of her friends 
who rather admired her ruthless individualism, regretting; 
that they themselves did not possess a little of what they 
might have termed her high, blind courage. Kathryn was 
an adorable tyrant, they said, and they were wont to let it 
go at that. 


CHAPTER III 


O NCE or twice during the silence which lasted through 
several long blocks, John Harrington turned his gaze 
from the buildings past which they were riding, to 
the face that Kathryn kept profiled. She felt it sweep the 
furs at her throat and rise slowly. It touched her chin— 
she felt it as if it were a tangible thing, her lips—and she 
felt them burn strangely, then it lifted to her hair and to 
her averted eyes. And though she knew that she might have 
bettered her effect by lowering her lids until their long lashes 
lay like fringed shadows along her cheek, she was conscious 
of a disinclination to do it. This odd reluctance to employ 
an artifice, the value of which she so thoroughly appreciated, 
puzzled her. She was even vaguely annoyed. 

That her hour of victory had come, she knew; yet for 
the first time in all her experience with men, she sat wait¬ 
ing instead of forcing the issue. There were a score of little 
artifices which might have enhanced her charm at the mo¬ 
ment. A score of subtle notes that she might have struck 
which would sound deep in the man’s heart. But though 
she had always defended her “music” against her apathetic 
and faintly accusing conscience, she had never pretended it 
to be anything but factitious and she knew suddenly that 
this discerning man at her side would recognize it as such. 

Too, there had come over her the sort of physical inertia 
that makes a cat stretch itself, oblivious to the world, along 
a luxuriously warm hearth stone. She had such a queer sense 
of comfort, of safety, of having already won the game . 

“Miss Lambert! Kathryn!” 

26 


THE AUTOCRAT 


27 


Her slim body moved slightly under the rug as the cat 
might edge with lazy content nearer to its warming saucer 
of cream, but she did not look round. 

Again the man spoke her name, his voice lingering on it 
caressingly, and Kathryn wondered that she had never before 
noticed its euphony. This time he had reached out and lifted * 
one of her gloved hands from where it lay on the rug. 

She found herself comparing the manner in which he was 
beginning his proposal with that in which other men had 
offered themselves to her. And then of a sudden, as he 
held her hand in his firm clasp, hot self-scorn shot through 
her. Latent decencies cried out against her glacial unfed- 
ingness, her designing selfishness, the detached way she had 
of weighing and measuring the heart of a man. 

She grew a little faint with the impulse which seized her, 
but lest it be superseded by indifference or by derision for 
the outraged decencies, she turned quickly and began to speak. 

“Please! You are making a dreadful mistake. I have 
wanted you to ask me—what you perhaps, were going to. 1 
had made up my mind that—that-” 

“That you would say- No! don’t tell me what you 

had made up your mind to say, Miss Lambert.” 

She thought his eyes had narrowed the least bit and that 
some dark object had flown swiftly across his face, but his 
fingers had not loosed their clasp of her hand and there was 
a breathlessness in his low voice and unhurried words, that 
was oddly contradictory. 

“I know w r hat I want you to say and I think I might 
almost”—he paused the barest perceptible part of a sec¬ 
ond—“make )'ou say it. But for the first time in my life 
I am asking for something in exchange for which I have so 
little to give, and I am humble. Long ago I was taught 
by a very wise old man”—a faint, reminiscent smile dark¬ 
ened the corners of his mouth—“that everything on earth 
has its price, and his ‘everything’ included women, for his 
was a country where women—were sold. But I-” 





-28 


THE AUTOCRAT 


Kathryn shivered and turned her eyes from the pene¬ 
trating gaze that seemed to be boring its way straight through 
her to the innermost secret chambers of her heart. 

“Was his country—America ?” she asked pointedly. 

“But I cannot imagine,” he went on, choosing to ignore 
her defiant question, “a woman of such cheapness that her 
value would not be beyond price. Therefore, knowing as I 
do their small importance as compared with the glorious 
woman I am asking for, I offer to you my love and my name 
with all the humbleness of which I am capable.” 

A warm flush dyed Kathryn’s face from her haughtily 
lifted chin to the little golden curls that nestled against her 
temples. Unfamiliar tumult was shaking to its very foun¬ 
dations the poise that had come down to her through gen¬ 
erations of shockproof thoroughbreds. She endeavored to re¬ 
gain the composure which was thus unprecedentedly shaken. 
But though she withdrew her hand from the fingers that 
made no effort to retain it, she found herself listening to his 
voice—for he had begun again to speak—with a humility 
that was strange to her, and she had the queer fancy that 
a door had opened in her heart and that a gust of clean wind 
was rushing through it. 

“ . . . and I don’t know if I am doing it in the approved 
manner”—it was as though he had sensed the weighing 
and measuring, the amused comparing of a moment ago— 
"“but I am perhaps, peculiar in that I prefer to do things 
my way.” 

She wondered what his way would be in his role as a 
husband, and the thought chilled and fascinated her. There 
was a brief moment when she steadied herself to an arro¬ 
gance that was almost insolent. 

“One could hardly charge you with displaying too much 
passion!” 

“Then I have not done it well?” There was a faint 
whimsical inflection in the question. 

“Oh, I have not said that. But-” 



THE AUTOCRAT 


29 


“But perhaps if I had had more experience-” 

Kathryn drew her brows together. Plainly he did not 
know that she meant to be sarcastic. 

“Perhaps. One certainly could not call you a good—. 
salesman.” 

She regretted the words the moment they had left her 
lips. She could not understand the perversity that had made 
her say them. Instead of making herself more enticing, in¬ 
stead of using her clever little artifices, playing her sweetest 
music, she was talking wildly to a man who seemed to have 
fallen victim to the silent instrument. She knew what would 
be his counter thrust to the stinging words she had flung 
at him. He would retort in that low tone of his, that it 
was unnecessary that he be a good salesman, since he was 

buying, not selling. She braced herself and waited- 

Why didn’t he say it? Her gloved fingers dug into the fur 
against her knees. She wished he would- 

“I am sorry if I displease you,” he began humbly, “but 
the love I offer you is so much bigger than I am, so much 
wider than my vocabulary that I can never hope to make 
you understand just what I mean, Kathryn, when I say I 
love you.” 

She turned wonderingly and their eyes met, then her lids 
lowered of their own volition, and the long lashes lay like 
fringed shadows along her pale cheeks. 

He had not lashed back. And she knew that he could lash 
back—this man at her side—lash until he had drawn blood. 
She knew, too, someway, that humbleness was as new and 
as strange to him as this sudden blind confusion was to her. 

“I—I think I do understand,” she murmured contritely. 
“I am sorry”—her fingers slid over his hand in fleeting 
apology, “and ashamed. Please forgive me.” 

John Harrington’s face had colored darkly at touch of her 
fingers and his somber eyes had followed her hand as it 
fluttered back to its former position in her lap. 

“Forgive you?” He looked up at her. “What nonsense! 





30 


THE AUTOCRAT 


You’ve had a trying morning, you are faint and nervous. 
I take you off for a cup of tea, and with small considera¬ 
tion I begin to tell you a story that must be stupidly old 
to you. And I’m sure I must have been telling it most 
awkwardly. But”—he smiled disparagingly—“it’s such a 
new—such a sacredly new story to me.’ 1 

The note of wistfulness in his last words touched a virgin 
spot in Kathryn’s heart. 

“Perhaps that is why—I like it,” she encouraged softly. 

“Then you are not going to say—no? At least not yet? 
You are going to give me a chance to make you want to be 
my woman?” 

Kathryn shrank a little from him. His final phrase had 
grated upon her. It was an expression that belonged to the 
stone age. Nevertheless it plumbed new depths in her shal¬ 
lows. It appealed to a dormant savagery within her, the 
existence of which she had never suspected. She was so ultra 
civilized that, to thus discover an inverse quality bursting 
unexpectedly through her time buffed varnish, astonished her. 
Then all at once splinters of broken, half-formed thoughts 
began to come together, to assemble into a great enveloping 
knowledge—the knowledge that she had won but that her 
victory was shared by the man whom she had meant to van¬ 
quish. As if someone else were speaking through her, she 
heard her own voice telling him that she had no desire to 
say anything but—yes. 

He sat very still for a moment. Then she felt him lift 
her hand and kiss it. She experienced a faint surprise that 
the warmth of his lips should penetrate through her glove 
to the cold flesh of her fingers. 

She moved a little and looked at him. His head was bared 
and his face was white—the white of new ivory. Once 
again she was possessed of the impulse to tell him that he 
was wrong in his belief that women were beyond price. 
She wanted to lay her cards face up on the table. Her 
natural honesty and her pet slogan that self-preserva- 


THE AUTOCRAT 


3 i 


tion is the first law of nature, had fought many battles. 
Honesty was in the ascendancy just now. She was still the 
gamester, but she felt that she had cheated and that she 
should offer an apology. 

“It is only fair to you, Mr. Harrington,” she began hur¬ 
riedly, but before she could go further, the car swung in 
to the curbing and stopped. John Harrington was already 
folding back the heavy mink rug which had symbolized so 
much to her in that moment when she had first felt him 
tucking it about her, and the chauffeur was opening the 
door. 

The chop house was a lofty-ceilinged room with dark 
wainscot of oak apparently time-stained, heavy beams 
dark as the wainscot, and narrow stalls of the same 
dark wood within which were little whitespread tables. 

Never before had Kathryn been in such a place. It was 
quite different from the more or less exclusive restaurants 
which she knew, yet there was nothing here that offended her 
aestheticism. 

She nodded her head approvingly. 

“It is one of my haunts,” her companion said quietly. 
“You like it? I am glad.” 

Very gently he began to unfasten her sable scarf and they 
both laughed at his awkwardness. But when she would have 
unclasped the obstinate hook, he put her hands aside with a 
peremptory gesture that thrilled the girl who since infancy 
had been mistress of herself and of all near her. She had 
given herself, she reflected, to this indomitable man, and he 
was taking up the reins of her life with a not-to-be-denied 
masterfulness, notwithstanding his evidences of deference. 

His fingers touched her white throat as the scarf fell sud¬ 
denly apart, and for an instant his eyes glowed like pieces 
of brilliant jet, but no other expression came into his face 
and in silence he helped her off with her coat. 

There was something strangely fascinating about the man 
as he leaned across the table toward her and Kathryn won- 


32 


THE AUTOCRAT 


dered just what it was. But try as she would she could not 
analyze it. She could not quite place the indescribable charm. 
Certainly he was not what people were wont to call hand¬ 
some. Yet he was possessed of an indefinable lure thgt was 
mystifying and baffling when one tried to trace it to its 
source. It was like electricity, Kathryn thought. One felt 
it—knew it was there—but that was all. 

He was tall and of a splendid physique. His features 
were well formed but his skin was of a peculiar coloring. It 
was dark, though scarcely olive. There was a pale amber 
tone to it that made the crow’s wing blackness of his hair 
and eyes extremely striking. The eyes themselves were set 
at slightly oblique angles, slanting the least degree toward 
the temples. His mouth was attractively clean looking. The 
lips were not too thin and nature had given them a generous 
supply of the pigments which she had withheld from the rest 
of his face. When he smiled there came into view teeth 
that were even and of a dazzling whiteness. His hands 
were long and sinewy. On one finger he wore a ring of 
Oriental design. It was a dull gold dragon with eyes and 
tongue of pigeon blood rubies, and Kathryn thought it de¬ 
cidedly ugly and someway— menacing. 

There was an immobility about the man that was 
marvelous when one considered the fact that he could 
make himself felt so thoroughly. He made little use 
of facial contortions. The slightest lifting of the straight 
dark eyebrows, a smile, or the very faintest frown were the 
only expressions that ever visited his face. Emotions might 
vibrate within him but signs of them never appeared on his 
features. Yet when he wished to convey to another a re¬ 
flection of some hidden thought or feeling he seemed to do 
it by mysterious magic. In this same way be could empha¬ 
size w T hen he talked, the things which he wished to empha¬ 
size, without the use of many adjectives and adverbs. He 
used both modifiers sparingly. He seemed not to need them, 


THE AUTOCRAT 


33 


so easily could he make himself and his meaning felt and 
understood by sheer force of personality. 

Kathryn smiled, chatted and fell into brief little silences 
but all the time she was in reality off somewhere searching 
for that part of her that was an accomplished musician. She 
felt that she was being inane and stupid—and—she had 
meant to wield a finished art before this man whom she had 
decided to marry. Even should he object to the artificial, 
still would he be charmed by it. 

To the man she had never seemed so alluringly sweet. 
His dark eyes gazed at her consumingly. His smile became 
strangely possessive. 

“Are you really mine?” he asked in his strange monotone, 
“Have the gods been so generous to me? Or is it—a 
dream?” He touched her hand as he spoke and his fingers 
were hot like his lips. 

“For a dream I am consuming a lot of material things, 
don’t you think?” As she spoke, Kathryn lifted her tea cup 
and smiled at him across its top. 

“No, it is not a dream,” he went on quietly. “It is the 
realest thing that has ever come to me. This happiness is 
not for just to-day. I shall have it to-morrow, and the day 
after that and all the days to come.” His voice had a 
strange, musical quality, the very softness of which had been 
known to drown and utterly silence voices that were pitched 
to a much louder tone. Again Kathryn found herself ad¬ 
miring it. 

“Freud might call me a dream—a bad dream. As for 
to-morrow and the next day and—all the days to come: 
you will be forever discovering anew that I really am of 
the thin, useless stuff of which dreams are made.” 

It was a splendid challenge. She knew exactly how almost 
any other man of her set would take it up, were it flung 
at him. It called for a poetical contradiction—an answer 
that would compare her to a lacy cobweb, “the most ex¬ 
quisitely patterned thing in the world”; or a tender some- 


.34 


THE AUTOCRAT 


thing about moonglow and the sparkling sheen of dew spun 
together into a veil of silver and gold, that someway would 
be made to typify the “shimmering personality” of Kathryn 
Lambert. Scarcely a man of her acquaintance would have 
failed under the circumstances to prove himself a poet. She 
waited curiously for Harrington’s reply. 

“I am sure you are wrong. I could not have come to love 
■you were you a woman without substance—without char- 
.acter.” 

Kathryn mentally grimaced. Certainly he was a most 
unusual man. Despite the fact that she was not fond of 
flattery, she was piqued that he should have been so literal 
when opportunity had offered itself for something clever in 
the form of a tribute. 

“Your heart is tricking you,” she said maliciously. “I am 
sheerest froth. I am indolently vain. I am consciously self¬ 
ish.” With hot unreasonableness she resented his unusual- 
;ness, his contrast to the men she knew, and paradoxically 
she resented it the more because it attracted her. 

“Your confession reduces your faults, Kathryn.” 

She stared rather arrogantly at the wall just behind 
him. That he should take her words as a confession angered 
her. That, she thought, was the difficulty with the nouveau 
riche! They sprung up like mushrooms, these men without 
ancestry, and it was not to be wondered at that they were 
lacking in finesse! 

She toyed with her spoon. The clink of it against the 
thin china cup soothed her. It echoed her every day life. 
The clink of spoons in thin china cups was a part of her 
existence, and the sound somehow reassured her in this try¬ 
ing moment when her world seemed to have dropped away 
from her. She had had an odd sense of floundering in space, 
alienated from her world by the man whose dark eyes she 
could feel on her face. 

“I made no confession, Mr. Harrington. I wished merely 
to save you many painful surprises.” She looked at him 


THE AUTOCRAT 


35 


squarely. “I suppose I might be called, on the bargain 
counter, an as is, but merchants sell such goods with the 
understanding that there has been no misrepresentation, and 
that said merchandise can therefore be neither exchanged 
nor returned.” 

Once again Kathryn received the impression that some 
dark object had flown swiftly across John Harrington’s 
face. If it had—it left no trace behind. He was smiling 
faintly. 

“You are very honest and very considerate. If you are 
an ‘as is,’ which, mind you, I do not believe, I am the more 
fortunate, in that it brings you closer to my lowly plane.” 

Kathryn bit her lip. This was too much! He—he was 
insulting. She would not marry him for all the money in 
the world! Her fingers slid nervously along the tablecloth. 
They caught in a small hole the margins of which were thin 
from wear. She glanced down and shivered. There was 
nothing on earth quite so ugly as a thing worn thin. And 
there was no excuse for it unless —one s check book too were 
thin. 

The hard little glint left her eyes and with careful pre¬ 
cision as to their manner of lifting, she raised them to meet 
the gaze that was still upon her. She began to speak. A 
tactful apology and a seductive smile would blot out any 
annoyance that she might have been causing him. She might 
even have to touch his hand ever so lightly, though she 
thought not. There was small chance of the lesser tricks; 
proving unsuccessful. 

“I’m afraid I’ve been-” 

She stopped short. Words scurried away from her leav¬ 
ing her stranded in a bog of silence. She was looking straight 
into the dark mysterious eyes that were bent so intently 
upon her. 

“What I had wanted to say,” she began rather lamely, 
“was that I am afraid you have misunderstood ... I have 


3<5 


THE AUTOCRAT 


never cared for any other man and—and I had thought if 
I married you-” 

“Then it isn’t love!” 

Kathryn wished she could read what lay behind the dark 
eyes that held hers. 

“Though you think it might come to be that because 
there is nobody else.” He had paused just the briefest space 
of time between his sentences but his face was void of ex¬ 
pression save a fleeting shadow that swept so swiftly over it 
that it seemed not to have been there at all. 

Kathryn looked back at him fearlessly. She was filled 
with self applause. She was showing him her cards, face 
up, and if he wanted her still, well, at least she was not 
deceiving him. The cold calculation of the night before 
was hypocritically warmed, made less flagrant by this half 
confession. But subconsciously she knew that this warmth 
was artificial, merely palliative. That it would not endure 
and that W’hen it was gone she would be again as she had 
been last night, selfish, calculating. 

“No, Mr. Harrington, there is nobody else. I like you. 
Tremendously. I like you more than I like any man I 
know.” At the moment Kathryn felt that it would be very 
easy to love this strange man who called her his woman , 
and her violet eyes became dangerously soft and serious. 

“That is a big point in my favor,” he said evenly. “I 
must teach you to more than like me, but I’m an inex¬ 
perienced teacher.” He did not tell her that she was the 
first woman in his life. He did not say that this thing 
called love had avoided him until now. 

It did not occur to him that there was anything unusual 
in all that. He did not dream that this gorgeous, butterfly 
girl who smiled at him with such clear young eyes could 
have taught him the most intricate things—from art to tech¬ 
nique—about LOVE ? If you had asked him he would 
have told you that it would be utterly impossible for a piece 
of God’s handiwork such as this Kathryn Lambert, to grow 



TIIE AUTOCRAT 


37 


into mature womanhood without having men fall in love 
with her and having them tell her so. But at the time 
he thought of none of this. It was all very simple and very 
wonderful. He had found the woman and she had given 
herself to him. That she did not love him did not seem so 
strange. Why should such a woman love him—unless or 
until—he had painstakingly taught her. Who was he that 
he should expect so great a thing? 

“Suppose we take for the first lesson a nice comfy tete-a - 
tete at my aunt’s this afternoon at four.” Kathryn’s blue 
eyes lifted. “You can sit on the same divan with me and 
tell me all sorts of things and I’ll pour your tea and learn 
whether you prefer lemon or cream in it and how many 
lumps of sugar you use.” Kathryn knew this remark should 
be relieved of some of its sophistication by a drooping of 
her satiny white eyelids. But the man’s steady gaze held her 
own by a magnetic force that more than half frightened her. 

“And what are some of the things which I must tell you, 
lady mine?” 

“Oh,” her eyelids wavered but under the spell of the eyes 
that looked back at her, they steadied again,—“you might 
tell me lots of things about yourself,—a—a few things about 
me, and-” 

“What shall I tell you about you?” John Harrington 
asked smilingly, quite ignoring the first part of her sentence. 

“Well, you might tell me for instance, how beautiful I 
am, how much you love me and—and other things like that.” 

To the man there was a charming naivete in her answer 
but he wondered a little at the words. He was so un¬ 
acquainted with this sort of thing. It seemed strange that 
to win a woman’s favor a man had need but to pay tribute 
to her. 

He smiled gravely. 

“I shall try to give the first lesson just as you have de¬ 
scribed it. I think I shall like being your teacher. May 



38 


THE AUTOCRAT 


I begin our first lesson now ?” He pushed his untouched 
plate to one side and reached for her hand. 

Kathryn nodded her head with a soft little laugh that 
surprised her with its genuineness. There was something 
really fascinating about the man. Then, too, it had sud¬ 
denly struck her as ridiculously funny—this idea of so in¬ 
experienced a man teaching love to her —to the Kathryn 
Lambert who had engineered love in a hundred hearts. 

“Then my first command is that you call me John.” 

“But teachers never command, Mr. Harrington. They 
request.” 

“Don’t they? I am sorry. You tempt me to command.” 

His teeth dazzled her. She recalled the small reflector 
the throat specialist had worn strapped around his head the 
time he had examined her temporarily ailing throat. 

“Now you will call me John, please. You see I have 
compromised by adding the ‘please.’ ” He was holding her 
hand and the touch of his bare fingers against hers was aston¬ 
ishingly pleasant. 

Like a flash of lightning that for an instant makes dis¬ 
tinct things buried in darkness, Kathryn knew suddenly that 
she would come ultimately to love deeply or hate fiercely, 
this man whom she had promised to marry. 

“Very well, John. I’d hate being chastised. Not that I 
think you are the kind of teacher that would leave marks 
of a wooden ruler on the palms of my hands, but I’m afraid 
that you might leave marks on my dignity, and wounded 
pride hurts much more than wounded hands. I couldn’t 
bear being humbled. Wearing a dunce cap would kill me.” 

Meditatively John Harrington turned over the slim white 
hand which he held in both his own and tenderly he touched 
the pink palm with the tips of his fingers. 

“Consciously, voluntarily, I shall never leave the mark of 
a ruler on this little palm. You will never thrust it under 
the ruler though, will you, Kathryn dear?” 

Kathryn started. There seemed to be a warning in the 



THE AUTOCRAT 


39 


question but since there was no sign of it in his face she; 
decided it had been but an unfortunate choice of words. 

“The one thing I do best,” she deprecated, “is protecting 
myself against hurt.” 

And the man looking at the palm of the woman who was* 
to be his wife, marveled at its softness—at its delicate color¬ 
ing—at its elusive fragrance. 


CHAPTER IV 


€t what shall I tell him when I have reached his 

studio?” Kathryn Lambert smoothed the sheet 
under the injured girl’s chin. 

The girl on the bed moved her head slowly and her dark 
eyes sought the window where snowflakes pausing for a mo¬ 
ment peeped curiously in at her before proceeding lazily on 
their way. 

“Tell him I have gone—away—for a few weeks. If 
he wants to know where—tell him you are not sure—tell 
him—anything that will satisfy him. He—he mustn’t know 
the truth—you—vou will try to keep him—from guessing 
that?” 

The dark eyes came beseechingly back to the fair face 
bending above, and she sighed softly. She would have 
preferred to keep her reason a secret but this girl from an¬ 
other world who had so graciously befriended her, deserved 
an explanation of the message which she had promised to 
carry to the one person on earth who would miss her—who 
would remark her absence in the great theater of life. 

“He is very poor. He has an invalid mother,” she went 
on. “He—he needs all his time, every minute of it. He is 
doing his first really big thing—and—he must have a clear 
mind and a steady hand. We—he—hopes to have it accepted 
by the park commissioners of Philadelphia. They want a 
fountain for one of their parks and—if they—if they take— 
Cyril’s group—don’t you see—he is made. The bitterest part 
of the struggle is over. He needs his time, every bit of it 
Can you understand ?” 


40 




THE AUTOCRAT 


4i 


“I can understand about the time,” Kathryn caught the 
retreating hand and held it firmly, “but I can’t see why 
you will not give him the pleasure of sending you something— 
a book perhaps or some fruit or flowers. Besides he could 
visit you in the evenings.” 

“Ah! I don’t wonder that it is hard for you to under¬ 
stand—you who have never known the real value of a single 
cent.” Drina smiled apologetically and answered the pres¬ 
sure of the hand which held hers, with a timid tightening of 
the clasp. 

“Cyril works at the studio all day for which the pay 
is far off in the future. It is in the evenings that he earns 
the pittance that buys the necessary comforts for his mother 
and himself, and sometimes a luxury for the mother—the 
cost of which must be lied about. He—he has scarcely 
enough money with which to buy his blocks of marble, and 
anything spent for me would mean a sacrifice of something 
for him. Please! You will not let him know?” Her face 
became wistful. 

“I will not let him know, strange little person. And I 
shall come again to-morrow and tell you all that he has said.” 
Kathryn rose and fastened the fur scarf about her neck. 

“Will you have time to come again to-morrow? And 
won’t you hate me for being such a lot of bother?” 

“I would hate myself if I didn’t like coming. I-” 

Kathryn hesitated. 

What she felt was that life had been so much better to 
her than to the poor thing there on the bed—this Drina 
Nazovitch who wandered about the subway stations with 
a basket of flowers on her arm. She had never looked deep 
into the life of those less fortunate than herself and she was 
astonished, now that she had stumbled onto the very dregs 
of poverty, to find this little proletarian very much like her¬ 
self. Beautiful—well educated—soft spoken. Just what 
she had imagined these other people to be like she was not 
sure. Perhaps she had never given them much thought— 


42 


THE AUTOCRAT 


but unconsciously she had felt that they must be altogether 
different beings from those of her world. She was reluctant 
even now to believe that they were not. 

“You were saying-” the girl on the bed broke in upon 

her pensive silence. 

“I was saying that I was sorry you had to meet with an 
accident, but I was glad something had brought us together. 

“I think,” she continued thoughtfully, “you will be good 
for me. There are not many days when I would tell you 
this, not many moods that would allow me to acknowledge 
it even to myself.” She smiled deploringly. “But this 
happens to be one of my few right moods.” 

The next instant the sick girl was alone, her eyes on the 
door through which the fairy princess had disappeared. 

Cyril would take as an omen of good luck the visit from 
one of Dame Fortune’s favored ones. She knew perfectly 
how he would wait with impatience to tell her the news. 
Dear, superstitious old Cyril! His good omen might be 
even an inspiration for him. Indeed, she was sure that it 
would be! And maybe Miss Lambert could wave her magic 
wand and bring success to a struggling sculptor. Oh! if 
she would—if she would! And Drina smiled hopefully 
at the door. 

Below, in the office, Kathryn was learning that John 
Harrington had arranged to have the injured girl’s bills 
sent to him, and a strange warmth was flooding her heart. 

Her taxi was waiting, and climbing in she gave the chauf¬ 
feur a number on a side street near Gramercy Park. 

It was funny, she thought, what an eventful day she 
was having. The excitement of it made the blood race 
in her veins and she suspected that it had been on the point 
of stagnation. 

The car halted before an old brick building and Kathryn 
stepping out, looked about her curiously. 

The studio building in front of which she was standing 
had been a livery stable in its )X)uth, as Kathryn was later 



THE AUTOCRAT 


43 


to learn. Just now her curiosity and interest were quickly 
satiated, and with a disdainful little shrug, she lifted the 
heavy brass knocker that was the only decorative thing about 
the place. In another moment she heard a sound as of 
someone running down stairs, and almost at once the door 
opened. 

“You are Mr. Cyril McLennon?” Kathryn asked of the 
merry gray eyes that looked down at her from a height of 
six feet. 

“I’m that same McLennon, worse luck,” answered the man 
in the door, with a sour grimace. “And if it’s wanting to 
see me you are, I’d be honored if you’d come in to my bit 
of a studio. I have one perfectly respectable chair that will 
make you quite comfortable—which is more than I can say 
for the rest of them.” 

He held the door hospitably wide, and smiling her thanks 
Kathryn entered. 

She found herself in a miniature hallway at the end of 
which was a flight of extremely steep stairs. 

“The elevator isn’t running to-day.” The man seemed 
irrepressible but the words might have been just a shy man’s 
attempt to appear at his ease, for there was a note of pro¬ 
found respect in his voice. 

He led the way up the stairs after a hesitant moment. 
He appeared to be not quite certain whether it was correct 
for the man or the lady to ascend first. 

Cyril McLennon had seen at a single glance that his 
caller was not of the kind who usually came to his door. 
Never before had an automobile stood at his curb. Never 
before had a lady with that unmistakable stamp of breeding 
and wealth lifted his knocker and asked for Cyril McLen¬ 
non. It is small wonder that his merry laugh and eager 
words were not quite sure of themselves. They were not 
in the least at ease. No more was he. 

Kathryn seated herself in the horsehair chair which he 
had at once brought forward for her. 


44 


THE AUTOCRAT 


“I think you’ve maligned the other chairs. They look 
quite as respectable as this one.” She smiled, and Kathryn 
could smile most dazzlingly. 

“They’re hypocrites, the rest of them. They wouldn’t 
hold the honesty of certain ward politicians. But the one 
I’ve given you though a bit slippery has always been reliable.. 
When you get well acquainted with it you never have the 
least trouble in keeping on it and retaining a semblance of 
repose.” 

Kathryn laughed aloud. A sweet rippling laugh that ran 
up the scale and down again, and Cyril McLennon thought 
he had never heard music so enchanting. 

Around the four walls ran a deep shelf on which were 
scores of groups, heads, busts, arms, legs and torsos. Shoved 
back into littered corners were pedestals supporting larger 
pieces. The center of the room was occupied by a huge 
block of marble that must have gone through the floor had 
there been no reinforcements. At first Kathryn thought it 
rough and untouched but as she looked at it more closely, 
she found angular faces peering out at her. It was little 
more than a rough sketch, but there was, she thought, the 
promise of life in the figures that were on the point of 
emerging from this great womb of stone. 

A year in Florence had given her no small knowledge 
of the fine arts, and she was not slow to recognize the 
strength of the half finished thing before her. She was fur¬ 
ther impressed by the rugged beauty of the clay model from 
which the sculptor had been working. Here the faces held 
expression, the figures action. 

“You did that?” She was loath to believe that an un¬ 
known artist could have coaxed so much from a bit of wet 
clay. 

McLennon picked up a soiled overall garment from the 
floor where it had been tossed probably when he had gone to 
answer the knock on his door. The action served to cover 
his nervousness. 


THE AUTOCRAT 


45 


“I am doing it. The figure at the left center must be 
done over. It doesn’t quite express what I meant it to. The 
group represents the seasons. The summer figure hasn’t 
enough warmth. It must be made somehow to suggest blue 
skies and fruits and flowers and butterflies. I’m not finding 
it easy to put all that in the face and figure of a woman.” 

Kathryn tilted her head critically. 

“Yet one gets the idea of rain and melting snows in your 
Spring, and certainly Autumn and Winter are rich enough 
in suggestion.” 

“Do you like it?” Cyril McLennon flicked an imaginary 
speck from his coat sleeve. 

Kathryn turned her beautiful golden head and stared at 
the man in frank surprise. 

“It is a masterful thing, Mr. McLennon!” And she put 
out her small gloved hands. 

The hands that had put life into a lump of wet clay took 
them gratefully. For several seconds they stood thus, then 
their fingers relaxed, and their arms dropped to their sides. 

With a sense of guilt Kathryn recalled her errand. 


CHAPTER V 


I T had not been very difficult to make Cyril McLennon 
believe that Drina had gone away for a few weeks. 
The man had expressed a little wonder, saying that he 
could not see for the life of him, where she could have gone, 
and then he had looked into Kathryn’s blue eyes and had 
wondered no more. Kathryn might have told him that 
Drina had gone away to Mars in a contraption designed 
by Marie Corelli and Cyril McLennon would never have 
doubted it. What he could not understand, however, was 
how Drina had come to know this distinguished messenger. 

He had counted upon Drina to pose for him, he said. He 
was anxious, of course, to do that Summer figure, and Drina 
would have helped him. To her own astonishment Kathryn 
Volunteered her services, and with surprised humbleness 
McLennon accepted her offer. An hour was set for the 
following day. 

Kathryn drove home excitedly, her brain dizzy with the 
varied events that one after another had tumbled upon her 
during that never-to-be-forgotten day. 

She found John Harrington waiting for her in the Van 
Kemp drawing-room. He had been there a quarter of an 
hour and he was not accustomed to wait for people. But 
at sound of her voice he condoned the offense. 

“I’ve just come in.” She held out her hands to him and 
smiled. “I’d run upstairs and smooth my hair and powder 
my nose if I thought you were not already tired of waiting.” 

“You could scarcely be more charming than you are at 
this moment,” he said. “Besides, I’m going to see you plenty 

46 


THE AUTOCRAT 


47 


of times when your nose isn’t powdered and your hair isn’t 
smoothed. I like your hair as it is now. And I like your 
nose as it is now.” He drew her into his arms and removing 
the smart little hat and tossing it on to a chair, pressed his 
face against the fragrant hair. 

Kathryn closed her eyes. Her long lashes lay like silken 
fringe against her cheek. Her pulses throbbed—her senses 
became sharply alive—she was amazed to find that she 
actually liked the painful pressure of his arms. She began 
to believe that this strange man—this wizard, as the sugar 
trust had called him, had hypnotized her. Until that very 
morning it had meant nothing to her to touch his hand in 
greeting—to smile into his eyes, or to be held close in his 
arms when they danced. She wondered- 

But as she wondered there came the touch of his lips on 
her eyelids and it seemed to seal them to him as the flap 
of an envelope is sealed to the envelope itself. His lips 
were hot, and without conscious thought Kathryn felt that 
the eyes through which she had played her most fascinating 
music—music that had made men her slaves, were being 
branded as John Harrington’s property. 

Releasing her finally, he led her to a deep chair by the 
fire. After placing her carefully in it, he drew up a stool 
and lifting the feet in the buckled pumps, deposited them 
gently upon it. Then, much to Kathryn’s astonishment, he 
began to remove one of the wet little shoes. 

“What on earth are you doing?” She tried vainly to 
wriggle her foot from his grasp. 

“Your feet must be damp and I won’t have you catching 
a dangerous cold now that you are mine.” Without looking 
up he slipped a shoe from a silk-stockinged foot. 

Kathryn gave a vicious little kick but the man on his 
knees at her feet took not the slightest notice. 

How dared he? He treated her—as if she were a child! 
She, whose smallest command had always been obeyed! She 
hated masterful men. Positively hated them! She would 



43 


THE AUTOCRAT 


break the silly engagement. His money—all the money in 
the world would never suffice for this insolent disregard of 
her wishes. 

Her stormy eyes watched the deft movements of the 
Binewy, capable hands at her feet. He was drawing off the 
other shoe and his fingers were touching ever so fleetingly 
the silk stockinged ankle. To her chagrin the blood in her 
chilled little foot warmed instantly. Moodily she watched 
him set the offending pumps on the stone hearth of the fire¬ 
place. 

Glancing up he caught a glint from the flinty blue eyes 
above him. 

He laughed softly. His laugh, like his voice, was mellow 
and unhurried. 

“You are rebellious. All naughty children are when those 
in authority oppose them. You see, in your heart you know 
that I am doing what is right, but knowing it only adds 
fuel to your anger. I should like you to remember that 
always as long as we both shall live I shall do for you what 
I think is best for your good. Perhaps, as now, it may not 
always seem right to you, but you will allow me to do it 
because you will know that I would die rather than do that 
which would harm you.” 

Kathryn’s heart softened. The fathomless dark eyes gaz¬ 
ing up at her were wonderfully attractive. And she could 
not deny that she liked the firm look of the sinewy Lands 
that had touched her feet, or that she liked his voice and 
his laugh and his manner of speech. But her face remained 
stormy. It was bad enough to be vanquished but it was 
worse to be driven to an acknowledgment of defeat. At 
least she would not run up the white flag. She would not 
smile, not for worlds. She—would show him that- 

He was daring to warm her feet between his two hands! 

“I did not know,” he was saying in his quiet, unsmiling 
way, “that the worst of all poverties had been mine. A 



THE AUTOCRAT 


49 

man who lives without love is poor. Though his coffers 
are filled to overflowing, he is none the less a pauper.” 

He pressed her feet half savagely between his long fingers, 
looked into the fire for a silent moment, then lifting his head 
and looking up at her, he continued: 

“With you it has been different. You have had close 
family ties and near friends. You Jiave loved and—been 
loved. Everyone must have loved you. Perhaps you have 
even had a surfeit of love. But you will not refuse me— 
crumbs, will you?” 

The faint shadow of wistfulness in his habitually emotion¬ 
less face struck Kathryn as being new and strange as if it 
were there for the first time in his life. It softened her. 

She reached out her hand and laid it upon his head. It 
was one of those sudden impulses that always managed to 
keep her in a fever of regrets. 

“John!” Some way the name sounded less ugly in this 
moment. 

“Dear man, that has owned so much and so little! That 
is a paradox, isn’t it? Poor man, who has come starving 
to my cupboard! I shall see that you never hunger again. 
I-—I am not very good, John. I’m vain,” she would not 
permit him to stop her, “and selfish and lots of things that 
you are not, but I shall try to be worthy. And if I’m not 
always as good as I should be, you’ll—you’ll be patient with 
me, won’t you?” 

There was a gasp of astonishment from the doorway. 

The two near the fire looked up. At once Harrington 
rose and went forward to meet Mrs. Van Kemp, who stood 
rooted to the floor at the end of the room. The mistress 
of the house gave him her hand with a little fluttering ges¬ 
ture that was meant to convey to him something of the keen 
sorrow of an adoring aunt who has just stumbled upon the 
shocking knowledge that she is to lose her charming niece. 

Mrs. Van Kemp had a repertoire of gestures that, though 
they meant a great deal to her, meant absolutely nothing to 


50 


THE AUTOCRAT 


anybody else. She had gathered them from everywhere, 
willy-nilly. An actress made a gesture to further a meaning 
and Estelle Van Kemp filed the gesture away for future use, 
its accompanying meaning calmly ignored. Indeed, many 
of her most effective pantomimic punctuations were reminis¬ 
cent of the stage, though she was not above adopting her mute 
expressions from other sources. A lady, necessarily of course, 
one of high social position, had but to move her hand or her 
head in some odd, individual manner, and at once the move¬ 
ment became the property of little Mrs. Van Kemp, whom 
it did not perhaps at all fit. Recently, since the society 
editors of newspapers had begun to devote generous space 
to the charms of Kathryn Lambert, enlarging especially upon 
her fascinating grace, she had adapted to her own use many 
of the girl’s little gestures. 

“I’m so happy to find you here. Quite a surprise! Fancy, 
finding a man, whose every minute is in such demand, ab¬ 
sorbing heat in my drawing-room in the middle of the after¬ 
noon. So many disappointed hostesses have told me that 
Mr. Harrington did not care for tea parties,” she gurgled 
as he led her to a seat. 

Many men might have answered that it was all a matter 
of hostesses. That he was sure tea would be nectar when 
indulged in in her house. That—and so on and so on. 
But John Harrington was not given to pretty speeches for 
the mere sake of flattering. 

“It is a wonderful privilege to come here to-day under 
the conditions which brought me.” He bent over Kathryn’s 
chair and caressed her shimmering hair half shyly. 

Mrs. Van Kemp eyed her niece with reluctant admiration. 
Had she done it already? If so, how? The man leaning 
over the girl’s chair did not look at all like the kind of man 
who falls at the first shot. 

“Your niece has made me inexpressibly happy, Mrs. Van 
Kemp.” John Harrington went on in a low voice. “She 
has promised to marry me.” 


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Si 


**Betrothed herself to you!” exclaimed his hostess, who 
could never see why anybody used common words when the 
dictionary was filled with choice ones. 

“Betrothed!” John Harrington smiled as he repeated it. 

She turned to Kathryn and with a gesture that was 
eloquent of melodrama, held out her arms with the single 
whispered word: 

“Kathie!” 

Kathryn smiled at the outstretched arms of her artificial 
little aunt. 

“I can’t fall upon your breast just now, Estelle. I’m in 
my stockings and John says I am to sit here until my feet 
are quite warm.” 

She knew just how the bomb would explode and she 
lowered her eyes to hide the amused light in them. She had 
pronounced the name very softly and she knew that her aunt 
was saying to herself, even as she gasped at the shock which 
the first glimpse of her stockinged feet had given her: “Fancy, 
the speed of the girl!” 

“Kathryn Lambert! Why did you not go to your boudoir 
and change your shoes and hose . Do you think the drawing¬ 
room a proper place in which to remove one’s shoes? And 
in the presence of a gentleman, too!” She had emphasized 
“hose.” The word stockings had not fallen pleasantly upon 
her sensitive ear. 

Through the veil of her lashes Kathryn saw that her aunt 
had drawn in her lips in righteous indignation. At the same 
time she felt the fingers of the man spread themselves out 
over her head like protective tentacles. 

“Really, Auntie, I didn’t remove the shoes. The—the 
gentleman did.” 

The little lady stared at her. Plainly one of them was 
mad, either her niece or herself- 

The man was speaking. 

“She’s been out most of the day, and-” 

“Yes, I know,” interrupted Mrs. Van Kemp. “Didn’t 



52 


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she fail even to send an apology to Mrs. J. Gordon Bradlie, 
whose guest of honor she was to have been at a luncheon 
to-day? And haven’t I had to speak through the telephone 
to a dozen different men who have been waiting to know 
if she were to attend the Pemberton tea dansantF’ Estelle 
Van Kemp did not approve of the carelessness with which 
Americans handled their engagements, besides—it would do 
no harm to remind John Harrington of the fact that Kath¬ 
ryn’s male admirers were legion. 

“There was an accident on the street,” Harrington had a 
cool way of ignoring interruptions, “and Kathryn,” he hesi¬ 
tated an instant over the name, “witnessed it. She accom¬ 
panied the victim to a hospital, lunched with me and again 
visited the hospital this afternoon. When she reached 
home-” 

“An accident! Really! Motor, of course! Dear, dear! 
And when one thinks of the safety and dignity of the car¬ 
riage with its finely bred horses! But America wants speed, 
Mr. Harrington, not dignity. Do tell me about it.” 

“Her feet were damp and cold,” he continued, much to 
the secret amusement of the girl upon whose red-gold head 
his fingers were resting, “and I removed her shoes and com¬ 
pelled her to sit here and warm them.” 

Compelled her! Mrs. Van Kemp was sure she had gone 
stark, staring mad. Who was this who talked of compelling 
Kathryn Lambert! And that Kathryn should have permitted 
him to perform such an intimate service! 

“You must know, Estelle dear, that when one’s”—Kath¬ 
ryn paused, then finished maliciously—“hosed legs and feet 
are half frozen it is no time to consider too rigid conven¬ 
tions.” 

On her head came another slight pressure and intuitively 
she knew that John Harrington was laughing with her— 
silently—secretly—yet with keenest appreciation. 

“Hosed!” Mrs. Van Kemp’s puzzled voice dropped the 
end of the word as though it had become hot in her mouth. 



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S3 


Her face flushed. She had an abnormal terror of ridicule. 

“Kathryn, I do wish I could prevail upon you not to say 
‘legs.’ ” She meant to say this in a plaintive tone of hope¬ 
less entreaty. Instead, her high pitched voice bristled with 
anger and it pricked her throat as it came out, yet it had no 
visible ill effect on the other two. 

“My dear,” Kathryn smiled at her indulgently, “don’t you 
know that it is less vulgar to say leg and think limb, than 
it is to say limb and think leg?” Kathryn was almost sure 
she heard a chuckle from above the back of her chair. 

With wounded dignity the mistress of the house took the 
tray from the butler who came in at this moment, and set¬ 
ting it down on a small table began to pour the tea. Kath¬ 
ryn had begun to tell the man of the things that had hap¬ 
pened to her since she had left him at noon and John 
Harrington leaning tenderly close to her, was listening at¬ 
tentively. 

On the following morning Kathryn went again to the 
hospital where she sat for an hour with the girl whose 
sweetheart had so piqued her interest. But she did not 
disclose the fact that she had arranged to pose for him. 
McLennon had said to her: “If you write to Drina—she 
does not want me to write else she would have had you 
tell me where she has gone—do not say that I needed her 
and that you so generously volunteered your services. She 
would worry, and she would want to hasten back.” And 
his gray eyes had lost some of their merriment, while his 
ruddy cheeks had gone a shade less ruddy. 

These visits to a hospital were interesting adventures to 
Kathryn, though she did not like to confess the fact to her¬ 
self. It was true, she acknowledged, that Drina’s poverty 
affected her tremendously, and that the girl’s brave smile 
made her heart ache. But then, some operas affected her 
tremendously, and the paintings of certain Italian masters 
made her heart ache. She was, however, finding the hospital 
drama more worth while than any play current on Broad- 


54 


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way, and her heroine seemed to be more human and real than 
she had supposed the Drina species could be. She would not, 
however, be converted to a tolerance of the entire breed. 

A few women from her own particular social stratum had 
gone in for settlement work, socialism and—that sort of 
thing. Dowds! Frumps, who wore flat heel shoes and 
freak hats! She shuddered at thought of them. Strident 
women who wept at sight of a homeless cat, yet were avid 
in their desire to serve on juries that handled murder cases. 
No doubt atavism was to be blamed for it. They seemed, 
these women reared to be fastidious, to be strangely attracted 
to this lower level, as though it had homed an ancestor. 
Unquestionably they were hybrids, mongrels. Well-bred 
persons remained in their natural elements. Worse than the 
social climber was the woman who descended to lower strata. 

It was all very well to be democratic in individual cases, 
but democracy as a rule for living—well, it was simply pre¬ 
posterous ! There must always be the classes and the masses! 

Loathing the masses, she had never particularly admired 
the classes. That she recognized faults in the latter troubled 
her. She had made loyal efforts to shut her eyes to them. 
Inasmuch as she was herself so imperfect, she should expect 
less perfection. Nevertheless, there occasionally came to her 
together with a vague unrest, a bothersome dissatisfaction 
with life as she lived it. Once or twice since she had ma¬ 
tured into womanhood and into her inherited social position, 
she had stood back mentally and watched with definite scorn, 
herself and others in the vapid game of pretense. Yet it is 
doubtful if she could have lucidly expressed a reason for 
that scorn. Or that she could have told exactly why she 
felt that members of her world attained only half-pleasures, 
half-griefs. Without actually phrasing it in her mind, she 
had arrived at the conclusive impression that society was 
cheating itself. 

But whatever ideas or impressions or unrests peopled the 
stage of her plastic heart, there was always in the foreground 


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55 


the same dignified curtain, Pride, and, at the rear, the 
worn old curtain, Training. The rehearsals were pri¬ 
vate, and they were carried on in a sort of jargon which 
Kathryn herself could not always translate, and which she 
rarely understood. 


CHAPTER VI 


N OT since her rather staid childhood had Kathryn 
Lambert felt so gloriously young! When she was 
eight years old she had one day eluded her governess 
and dared to climb a tree with but little more dignity than 
could well have been expected from the gardener’s daughter 
who had no long silk stockings to risk. She had never 
exactly envied the gardener’s daughter whose elfish intimacy 
with knee deep brooks and whispering trees rather puzzled 
her, but she had wondered a little in her childish way, that 
a gardener’s daughter should seem to have so much more 
fun than she. The gardener’s daughter hadn’t a saddle pony 
and she hadn’t a playroom full of dolls and things. Yet 
she laughed a great deal and— naturally. There was nobody 
to tell her just how to modulate her laughter. And best of 
all, she seemed to have absolute freedom. Through long 
summer vacations she was unharried by irksome rules and 
educators. So long as she did not drown herself in a brook, 
or leave a leg or an arm in a tree, she might wade and 
climb to her heart’s content. All this had made Kathryn 
wonder. 

She was experiencing to-day the same oddly triumphant 
sensations that had tingled through her during that never- 
to-be-forgotten defiant hour when, instead of parsing a lot 
of stupid old verbs, she had clung to a top-most tree branch 
oblivious to torn silk hose and ripped lacy underthings, and 
peered into a bird’s nest where lay five tiny speckled eggs. 

She was seated on a rough bench that commanded the 
center of the small dais at the end of Cyril McLennon’s 
56 


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57 


studio in the building that once upon a time had been a 
stable. A few feet away a ruddy-cheeked young Irishman 
in a blue denim smock, cast occasional glances at her and 
worked swiftly and silently at modeling clay. 

Life sang in her veins. She was strangely exhilarated, 
undeniably intoxicated. Never had she felt so vitally alive, 
except during the tree escapade, and perhaps during that 
long ago afternoon when she had sat on a garden bench for 
her father’s artist friend and learned from him the effec¬ 
tiveness of half-veiled eyes. 

Then her slender little legs had not reached the ground, 
they had hung a full foot from it. To-day her lithe young 
body was longer, but her half-veiled eyes were of the same 
heavenly blue and her hair was the same sunny gold. 

Her limbs were cramping but she took no heed. She grew 
a bit giddy but still she sat, interestedly watching the facile 
fingers that seemed never to tire. When that occasional 
glance swept her draped figure, a glow of satisfaction suf¬ 
fused her. And it was not altogether due to pleased vanity. 
Rather did it spring from the warming knowledge that she 
was perhaps for the first time in her life, giving or helping 
to give something worth while to the world. Too, there 
was that triumphant sensation of having peered into a bird’s 
nest instead of parsing verbs. She was for the moment, a 
rebel, a social buccaneer, a gay young pirate with black flag 
flying and conventionalities walking the plank. Parsing 
verbs and orthodox customs! They were equally stupid! 

In a very little while her black flag would come down 
and without doubt the outraged and ultra-orthodox Kathryn 
Lambert would justly try and easily convict this erstwhile 
sculptor’s model, this gay insurgent. But not yet. Just now 
she was Summer, and after a while though she would per¬ 
haps be looking back upon this hour with proud disdain, she 
would be somewhere in marble, in some unknown neighbor¬ 
hood park where children would look at her and dream of 
five tiny speckled eggs in a high nested tree, and old men 


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58 

and old ladies would gaze at her and know again the joy 
of knee-deep brooks and the smell of cherry trees in blossom. 

Suddenly as she looked, the modeler’s fingers fumbled, 
paused in their work, stopped. 

“Oh!” Kathryn started as one waking from a dream. A 
tremor rippled through her slender frame. 

Cyril McLennon glanced at his watch, looked at the wall 
clock across the room, then back again at his watch. Was 
it possible that so much time had elapsed? With humblest 
contrition he reached the dais at a single bound and lifted 
the half-fainting girl to her feet. 

“ ’Tis a beast I am! I’ve kept you posing too long a 
time! You must be exhausted. I shall never forgive myself.” 

“It was nothing. I can even go on.” But as she said it 
her knees doubled under her and she must have fallen had 
not a quick arm caught her. 

“It’s a fine man I am! You’re that near dead you can’t 
hold the weight of you on them wee feet. It’s a brute 
I am!” 

He would have carried her to the horsehair couch but 
Kathryn preferred the wooden bench to the camel humps, 
and with quiet insistence she sank again to her seat on the 
bench. 

She had removed her coat and hat upon her arrival and 
in a tiny room at the rear of the studio had exchanged her 
dress for a Grecian robe, feeling sufficiently chaperoned, for 
in a corner of the long room was an invalid’s wheel chair 
in which sat the white-haired little mother of the sculptor. 

“I thought the two of you were possessed, Cyril. Is the 
poor child tired to death?” The filmy blue eyes of the old 
lady looked inquiringly over the top of her spectacles. A 
knitting needle slipped unheeded from her lap to the floor. 

But Cyril did not hear. He was halfway down the steep 
flight of stairs. 

“Don’t be alarmed, Mrs. McLennon,” said Kathryn, “I 
was a little faint but I’m quite all right now.” 


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S9 


“ ’Twas a faintin’ fit you was after havin’, was it ? Ah l 
It’s all right you’ll be in a minute, my dear. They don’t 
last. That’s the only savin’ thing about them. Many’s the 
time I’ve had them myself.” The tremulous old voice 
was sweetly soothing and Kathryn wanted suddenly to crawl 
over to the shrunken little remnant of what once had been 
a buxom Irish figure and bury her face in the lap between 
the high sharp knees. She did not remember either of her 
grandmothers and all her life she had wanted a white-haired 
old lady like this Mrs. McLennon, into whose indulgent ear 
she could pour her heart at will. From observation she had 
learned that no ear is so indulgent and understanding as 
that of a doting grandmother. And she had felt herself 
cheated because she had missed that one luxury which the 
v^ery poorest of the poor so often had. 

“ ’Tis naught but a beast I am!” cried Cyril returning, 
loaded with bottles, spoons, a cup and various other things 
that had been within quick reach in the cupboard and medi¬ 
cine chest below. 

“There’s a wee drop of aromatic spirits of ammonia in a 
bit of water, Miss Lambert. I’ve used the same with mother 
there when she’s been nigh to keeling over.” Cyril’s blunt 
fingers were trembling as he held the glass to Kathryn’s 
lips which despite her fatigue were their wonted red. 

Obediently she drank the liquid and Cyril began to take 
an inventory of his hastily acquired stock of chemicals. 

“I’m that ashamed and scared that I’m trembling like an 
aspen leaf,” he laughed nervously. Then he knelt at the edge 
of the dais and carefully deposited thereon his sundry first 
aids to the injured and various other articles that were aids 
to no one but a cook in a kitchen. 

Most of the effect of her vertigo had disappeared by now 
and Kathryn looked down at the collection of things with 
amused interest. 

“I’m not sure, Miss Lambert, whether you should take 
next a few drops of peppermint or a few drops of camphor.” 


6o 


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The man on his knees at the edge of the dais ran his stubby 
fingers through his auburn hair thoughtfully. 

“I might try a small dose of that machine oil or a spoonful 
of the vanilla extract,” Kathryn replied with equal gravity. 

“Now it’s laughing at me you are, Miss Lambert.” The 
gray eyes looked up at her accusingly, but there was a ring 
of relief in the big voice and as the girl smiled down at him 
the eyes grew merry again. 

“Mother has a bottle of rheumatism liniment somewhere 
below. I can’t see how I missed it.” 

A high quavering laugh from the far corner chorused into 
their low duet. 

“He’s but a jester, Miss Lambert. He lacks only the bells 
and the tassels. The rascal of a spalpeen!” 

The man in the long denim smock stood up, and blowing 
a kiss to the little woman who sat smiling at them across 
the top of her spectacles, said gayly: 

“And she’s but a saucy young miss who lacks only the 
chance to drive men mad for the love of her! The impudent 
coquette.” 

Kathryn had never heard this sort of banter between 
members of a family. There was not a family of which she 
had intimate knowledge, whose members did not bore each 
other. And usually they did not stop there. They whipped 
each other with their boredom. 

It was all very new and strange—this other world into 
which she had yesterday stumbled. 

When she took her departure it was with the understand¬ 
ing that she would come again on Friday. This was Wednes¬ 
day. 

The two nights and the day that intervened before he saw 
Kathryn again, Cyril McLennon spent in dreams of her. 
Not that he wanted to think of her. Far from it. Was 
not she as far above him as the stars are above the earth? 
And was she not the most gloriously beautiful being in all 
the world, and was he fit to be anything better than a 


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61 


footstool for her dainty feet? Then too, there was Drina. 
Drina, whom he loved. Drina, whose swift little hands so 
often set to rights this disreputably neglected studio and the 
untidy living rooms below. Drina, who brushed his mother’s 
thin white hair when her head ached, and who came each 
night, when her day’s work was done, to read to that same 
little mother, while in the studio above he bent over the 
ledgers of a struggling corporation that paid him a few 
dollars each week for doing that for which a professional 
bookkeeper would have charged several times as much. 
Drina, who patched his work aprons and sewed on the but¬ 
tons where the need had escaped the uncertain eyes of his 
mother. Drina, who believed in him, who urged him on to 
greater things. 

Ah, no! He did not dream of the gorgeous butterfly that 
had flown with such self-assurance into his humble home 
because he wished to dream of her. But because he could 
not help it. It was as though she had flown in through a 
barred window and after fluttering about his workroom had 
lighted on the model’s dais where she had folded her wings 
and smiled at him through half-closed eyes each time he had 
glanced her way. She had laughed at him but also she had 
laughed with him. 

Drina came too, and smiled at him with wide, wistful 
eyes, but she was like a small brown moth, and the butterfly 
drove her autocratically into distant corners. Always in 
these fancies, he wanted to run after her and call her back. 
But he never did, not even when his imagination spun most 
loyally about her. And this fact when it came home to 
him, hurt him intensely. That even in phantasy, the frothi¬ 
est of day dreams, he should have permitted himself to neg¬ 
lect Drina! He was bewitched! He would telephone to 
this Miss Lambert and explain to her that he would not 
need her again. He would tell her-- 

But that would be absurd. Was he a man or wasn’t he? 
Did he wish to succeed or did he not? And after all, it 



62 


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was because of Drina that he most wanted to succeed. Sure, 
it was like a child he was acting! 

Late Thursday afternoon Mother McLennon received by 
special messenger, a great box of roses. Her son had gone 
to the door in answer to the summons of a boy on whose 
cap appeared the embroidered name of an up-town florist, and 
when the boy had insisted that the box carried the McLen¬ 
non address, and McLennon had finally satisfied himself by 
looking at the attached tag, he had brought the box thought¬ 
fully in to his mother. The little lady, as surprised as he, 
opened it carefully and turning back the folds of waxed 
paper, gazed wonderingly down at the fragrant flowers. 
Then she gasped. In their center was— 

“Cyril! Cyril, my lad! If it isn’t a bunch of sham¬ 
rock! May the Holy Virgin forever bless the child!” And 
Mrs. McLennon’s tears rolled unheeded down her furrowed 
cheeks, while her son pressed his closed eyes against a single 
red rose. 

With no thought for the havoc which her buccaneering 
might create in the hearts of the simple people to whom a 
street tragedy had introduced her, Kathryn was at this very 
moment enslaving in a tea room at the Ritz, a youth from 
her own world. Swaying her supple young body with his 
to the rhythm of a seductive dance, smiling through half- 
closed eyes the challenging smile of the sorceress, forgetting 
that she had promised to marry society’s man of mystery and 
that freedom was no longer hers. 


CHAPTER VII 


T HESE were very busy days for Kathryn, Added to 
her already crowded social calendar, was a hurriedly 
arranged series of the sort of affairs that society likes 
to give in honor of the newly engaged; there was McLen- 
non and his studio; Drina in whom she was still oddly 
interested; Estelle who appeared to be obsessed with the 
idea that a newly engaged girl must have no privacy what¬ 
ever, especially, within the precinct of own her boudoir; Uncle 
Edgar, ordinarily self-effaced and unobtrusive, turning up 
at regular intervals with solicitous inquiries as to her happi¬ 
ness, for although he had not been told, Edgar Van Kemp 
apparently suspected that mercenary motives had had some¬ 
thing to do with his niece’s engagement; and of course, there 
was John Harrington with his not-to-be-denied demands. 

Harrington had expressed a wish that they might be mar¬ 
ried with little delay, and Kathryn had seen no reason why 
they should not be, particularly since the last block of stocks 
from which she might have expected a decent dividend had, 
through some post-war convulsion, exploded like a pricked 
bubble. There would be a church wedding, of course. 
Society expected that of her, though as she naively told 
Harrington, she had seldom permitted society to blueprint 
her, having been satisfied to be the sole and unaided archi¬ 
tect of her life. (And Kathryn really believed that she had 
been just this.) She had, however, in the role of bridesmaid, 
walked so many times to the altar, that she felt it a kind 
of duty to herself to make one trip in the stellar part. 

There were old flirtations to be broken off, too, though 
63 


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Kathryn felt that by breaking them she was being unneces¬ 
sarily puritanical. Marriage was no longer the rigid contract 
that once it was. One did not have to retire from all other 
interests before entering into it. Past was the day when 
woman made a husband her very life. Husbands to-day 
were auxiliaries. That wives were auxiliaries went without 
saying. Seldom had they been anything else. Still, her 
passion for what she believed to be fair play, made her want 
to purge her life of anything that might interfere with the 
happiness of the man whose wife she was to be. 

J. Gordon Bradlie Junior might have caused another 
woman no end of annoyance and worry. He was like Kath¬ 
ryn in that he had always had his own way and had seldom 
been denied anything on which he had actually set his heart. 
And his heart had been very much set on Kathryn for 
more than two years. He was a year and a half older than 
she, but because of his dimpled chin and his natural effer¬ 
vescence and because of her unusual degree of intelligence 
and superior knowledge of life, Kathryn had refused to take 
seriously his never-ending protestations of love. 

Sometimes when she had patronized him beyond his boyish 
powers of endurance, he would remind her hotly of that 
year and a half, at which times Kathryn would turn in her 
saddle with an apologetic smile, or halt in their dance to 
pat his shoulder, or pause with golf club poised midair that 
he might measure her contrition. But even in her apologies 
there was that which marked her as belonging to another 
vintage. 

Nevertheless J. Gordon had gone on loving her, and Kath¬ 
ryn had continued to order him about, to laugh at him, 
and, whenever occasion demanded, to apologize to him. 
There were other men whose protestations of love had been 
but little less frequent than J. Gordon Junior’s. But the 
breaking off with these men was a thing more or less easily 
accomplished. She had pretended love with none of them, 
notwithstanding the fact that she had conveyed to each of 


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<55 


them a degree of encouragement that simulated It. With 
young Bradlie when she broke the news to him of her en¬ 
gagement, it was a quite different matter. He upbraided 
her, got on his knees to her, ranted, wept, and ended by 
threatening to kill her and himself. She laughed when he 
upbraided her, became really sorry and dangerously sym- © 
pathetic when tears rushed into his boyish eyes, and angry 
when he threatened. He was a goose! An infant! As for 
killing her and himself—if she thought for a moment that 
he had the man’s size courage for such a deed, she’d come 
nearer to loving him than ever she had. She was rather 
partial to caveman stuff so long as it didn’t discomfort her 
or muss her hair! And so, she had left him in Central Park, 
where this last interview had taken place, as serene as she 
might have been had they just finished a discussion of the 
weather. She had looked back once as her car rounded a 
bend in the drive, and sight of the unhappy figure on the 
scarred wooden bench had hurt her. She had bent her 
lovely head to the speaking tube to ask the chauffeur to turn 
back, but suddenly her Eve-old wisdom made her reverse 
the impulse. Better for Jimmy-boy if she left him thus 
cruelly than if she returned to him with a solicitous tender¬ 
ness that would fan Hope back to life. 

She had shut her eyes and continued on her way, and 
perhaps this act of cruelty was the greatest conscious con¬ 
sideration for another in which Kathryn Lambert had ever 
indulged. Her very cruelty was a kindness, and knowledge 
that she had acted in the wisest possible manner for Jimmy’s 
good filled her heart with a strange warmth. That by a 
conscious act of her own she had perhaps turned an admirer’s 
love to hatred made her the more satisfied with herself in 
that she had been decent enough to make the sacrifice. 

On the very morning on which Kathryn, breakfasting in 
bed, was reviewing that last scene with J. Gordon Junior, 
and feeling a bit unhappy about the boy for whom she had 


66 


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a genuine affection, John Harrington arrived at the Van 
Kemp house without previous appointment. 

He gave his card to the butler with: 

“Please tell Miss Lambert that I should like very much 
to see her at once.” 

A maid carried the card to Kathryn’s bedroom on a little 
silver salver, and when Kathryn had glanced at it and lis¬ 
tened wonderingly to the message, she laid it down on the 
breakfast tray and contemplated it thoughtfully. What on 
earth could he want at this unheard of hour! It could not 
be later than nine o’clock! 

“You’re the strangest man in the world,” she said, frown¬ 
ing down at the pear-shaped emerald which he had placed 
upon her finger. Then to the maid: “Tell him I am not 
yet up—that he can telephone to me in an hour.” 

But the girl returned within two minutes to report that 
Mr. Harrington would wait in the living-room until Miss 
Lambert could conveniently come down. 

“Of all the audacity!” Kathryn stared at the servant 
incredulously. “Very well,” she began to smile maliciously, 
“he can wait.” 

She meant that he could wait indefinitely. But almost 
involuntarily she pressed the button for her personal maid, 
and without thinking why she did it, she began a hasty toilet, 
all through the operations of which, she scolded the girl 
for her slowness. On her way from the room she paused 
at the door and without glancing back at the black-frocked, 
white-capped figure that was nervously gathering up crepe 
de chines and slippers, she flung across her shoulder! 

“That old rose dance thing from Bengal’s—I hate it! 
Will you please, Lucy, give it away, that I may not have to 
see it again ?” 

As a matter of fact, the old rose creation happened to be 
her favorite dance frock, being her newest one, but she knew 
that Lucy too, liked it. Only yesterday she had caught a 
glimpse of the girl standing before one of the long mirrors 


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67 


in her dressing room, holding the cobwebby thing admiringly 
against her slim figure. It was Kathryn’s way of apologizing 
for her unjust impatience. She was never very kind to Lucy, 
and never did she give her anything outright, but the girl 
understood and appreciated these covert apologies just as 
she understood and appreciated her proud young mistress. 

All the way down the broad stairs, Kathryn was preparing 
a properly crushing speech with which to greet her courageous 
visitor. But somehow when he had come forward and taken 
her two hands in his, she found herself saying quite sin¬ 
cerely : 

“You’re a horrid man to get me up so early, but I am 
glad to see you!” 

“I wonder just how glad you are?” John Harrington 
looked steadily into her eyes for a moment then his gaze 
traveled slowly down over the sensuous looking garment that 
hung from her shoulders in negligee fashion. It was not 
an elaborate garment, he knew that, inexperienced as he was in 
such things. Yet it was strangely seductive. Its fuchsia colored 
velvet and drapings of gold lace were intensely inviting. 
Through golden clouds he glimpsed the white satin of her 
arms, and above the fuchsia velvet he felt rather than saw 
the upturned face with its half-veiled eyes provokingly allur¬ 
ing. 

Whatever it was that he had come there that morning to 
say, he was oblivious of it now, as he took her suddenly in 
his arms and buried his face in her fragrant hair. 

At his first movement Kathryn protested, but as his arms 
closed tightly about her, she gave herself up to them. Never 
before had he displayed so much emotion, so much passion. 
More than once Kathryn had wondered at his self-control. 
Now as he took her head between his two long hands and 
bending down pressed his lips hard against hers, she became 
oddly dizzy, inert and strangely content. 

In some small sober part of the man’s mind a half-hearted 
criticism rose up against the woman in his arms. She was 


68 


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an elemental—an attache of the earth with a soul that was 
little more than a foetus! She was frankly animal, exqui¬ 
sitely, damnably perfect of flesh, a geisha born by mistake 
outside of Japan. Her chastity was not so much a credit 
to her as it was to the men with whom she toyed. 

They were all alike—these good bad women! It seemed 
to matter not whether they descended from earls or from pau¬ 
pers. Had not one of them ruined a young man in his office— 
driven him to suicide? This one in his arms had descended 
from Mayflower stock, the other one had sprung from mire. 
The mother of the latter had come from a fetid little town 
in Russia, her father from a fly-swarmed fish-market of 
Italy. But in the offspring that had ruined his late employee, 
fish and stale vodka had been smothered by pungent per¬ 
fumes. The unrest of Russia had been calmed by the indo¬ 
lence of Italy. Evolution had begun its refining process in 
rather an indifferent way. The protoplasm of what should 
one day, perhaps several generations hence, be a soul, was 
planted in the superb being that had sprung like an orchid 
from muck. The daughter of an F. F . V . was less to be 
excused. She was- 

But the blood that beat against his temples defended her 
with each passionate throb. Once the woman in her was 
awakened the soul of her would rival with its beauty the 
face that was a masterpiece of loveliness, but even were he 
wrong and she remained only the seductive enchantress— 
he would still want her, always want her! 

He began to speak in his customary low tones, but his 
breathing was audible and uneven, and his lips were again 
touching the tawny hair. 

“Why should we wait? Marry me to-day. Now! My car 
is at the door. There will never be a more fitting time for 
the binding together of you and me. Why should these 
things be staged, made spectacular? I want the fusion to 
take place while the perfume of your hair is still in my 
nostrils, the warmth of your lips still on mine.” 



THE AUTOCRAT 


69 


Kathryn made a little gesture of dismay, but she remained 
unresisting in his arms. At a sound from the reception hall 
beyond, John Harrington released her and stepped across the 
room. It was the butler on his way to answer a ring at the 
door. Harrington spoke to him, and though Kathryn look¬ 
ing dazedly on at them, could not understand the words, 
she saw the butler turn and speak to the parlor maid who 
was dusting the library on the opposite side of the hall. 

“IVe ordered your wraps,” Harrington said coming back 
to her at once, and again taking her head between his two 
powerful hands. 

“My wraps! I—I think you must be mad. I think we 
have both been a little mad!” Kathryn was making an effort 
to break the spell that had begun to disturb her now that 
she was becoming conscious of it. 

This thing that had happened to her- She could not 

comprehend it. It was like nothing she had ever experienced 
before. Not that any man had ever kissed her in just the 
same way—but men, several men, had kissed her. She had 
permitted it at those moments when a proposal of marriage 
was imminent, or the compliment having just been paid, she 
was tenderly refusing the man without actually estranging 
him. Those men had left her unmoved, whereas the kiss of 
John Harrington still burned on her lips. She felt the fire 
of it in her blood. 

She drew her troubled brows together. 

“Please! This is all very—undignified!” She wrenched 
her eyes from his penetrating gaze. “We are acting like 
children.” 

“Therefore with no artificiality!” 

He was still holding her head between his hands, and she 
was too proud to struggle for release. He smiled down at 
her, and without looking at him she wondered that a smile 
could be so ineffably tender and at the same time so heathen- 
ishly carnal. It was not like this man to mirror his emo¬ 
tions. She had never known anyone so expressionless. Well 


7 o 


THE AUTOCRAT 


—at least, she had had the power to take him beyond that 
perfect self-control of his. 

Her vanity might longer have enjoyed this fact had not 
thought of what the man had done to her own deep-rooted 
poise, radiated through her like a flash of white lightning. 

“No artificiality ?” she repeated dully, trying not to meet 
his eyes. 

“Children are apt to act with a certain naturalness. Their 
veneer is thin. You and I are barbarians just under the 
skin, dear.” 

Barbarian! She, who was so ultra-civilized! 

“That is one reason I want you now. I want to fan the 
spark of humanness that is flaring up in you like a ghost 
of a primitive fire, before you yourself can have time to put 
it out. You would kindle fires in others and—feed them, 
but you would smother your own. You are none the less 
an elemental, though you are swathed in reserve. Long 
repression does not always atrophy primal instincts, my 
darling, but it weakens them or makes one come to disregard 
them. I shall not give you a chance to analyze and regret 
this morning. . . .You can’t know how happy I am to find 
that you-” 

“You wanted your wraps, miss?” 

Lucy was standing in the door, politely gazing at the 
opposite wall. 

Harrington’s hands dropped to his sides as he turned un¬ 
hurriedly. Kathryn marveled at his instantaneous composure. 

“You’ve brought them? Thanks,” he said. “Will you 
tell Miss Lambert’s aunt that I have taken Miss Lambert 
for a drive. We shall speak to her on the telephone later.” 

“Really!” It was most embarrassing to have to argue 
the thing there in front of her maid who could not entirely 
hide her amazement at the suggestion that her mistress was 
going for a ride in a boudoir robe. “Lucy will think we 
are quite mad.” 

“On the contrary, Lucy, we were probably never so sane.” 


THE AUTOCRAT 


7 i 

He was taking from the girl a long moleskin coat and a small 
vivid velvet hat. 

Kathryn watched him fascinatedly with the feeling that 
everything he did was a part of some intricate pattern that 
was weaving itself into her life. She wanted to resist him. 
But she had a prescience that it would be useless. That it 
was all inevitable. And yet— Did she want to resist him? 
She didn’t know. She wasn’t sure. 

“Mr. Harrington has wagered that I will not drive with 
him clad as I am,” she heard herself saying, and on the 
instant loathed herself for having stooped to offer an ex¬ 
planation to a servant. She turned at once and slid her 
lace-veiled arms into the cloak that Harrington was holding 
open for her, and with a curt nod of dismissal to Lucy, 
and a whimsical smile at Harrington, she took the bright 
little hat and pulled it snugly down over her charmingly 
disheveled golden hair. 

Once outside the iron-grilled doors, Kathryn turned and 
faced her silent escort contemplatively, as though she would 
gauge the strength of his will. The whimsical smile still 
hovered about her lips, but her eyes were defiant. 

“Of course, you are jesting! I do think, however, that 
you might have chosen another hour.” 

“Is it then, something to jest about when a man has found 
that the girl he loves is all woman?” 

“I don’t in the least understand what you mean.” 

“Please, dear, let’s have none of the little pretenses this 
morning. You know perfectly well what I mean. You 
know that something stirred within you this morning that 
you never felt before.” 

“Why do you say that?” 

Harrington did not answer at once. He was looking 
at her mouth as though he would gaze through it straight 
down into the depths of her heart. 

“Because you—returned my kiss,” he said finally. 

Kathryn flushed hotly, and though her infrequent blushes 


7* 


THE AUTOCRAT 


always aroused in her an anger against those who caused 
them, there was no evidences of anger on her face at this 
moment, only astonishment and disbelief. 

“When a woman permits a man to kiss her, is it not the 
same thing as—kissing him?” 

“No, it is not. But, dear, why analyze? In another 
moment you will be smothering with your denials the little 
fire that I know has flamed up within you. Come, while 
you are still you and not the manikin society has tried to 
make of you.” 

“You can’t possibly believe that I am going to drive off 
with you and—marry you to-day?” She wondered why 
her breath caught in her throat while she waited for him 
to answer. 

Harrington turned his head and nodded to the chauffeur 
of the big French limousine at the curb. The man touched 
his cap and swinging out upon the sidewalk, stood at atten¬ 
tion beside the car’s door. 

“If you can’t be honest enough with yourself, my proud 
little darling, to acknowledge that you ujfnt to—marry me 
to-day, then-” 

Kathryn tilted her head inquiringly to one side. 

“Yes?” 

“I’ll have to kidnap you.” 

“Suppose I should call for help?” 

Harrington laughed. 

“You wouldn’t.” 

“And you’ve no idea how I can scratch and bite. When 
I was a very little girl, I almost chewed up a smart boy 
cousin who tried to kiss me.” 

“As was right. The kiss he tried to steal belonged 
to me.” 

Again Harrington laughed and in spite of herself Kathryn 
[joined him. Then before she could renew her protests and 
banter, he had taken her arm in his firm grasp and forced 
her gently along toward the waiting car. 


THE AUTOCRAT 


73 


With the door of the motor closed and this strange man’s 
arm about her, his dark inscrutable eyes bent intently upon 
her face, the very breath from his lungs in her hair, there 
came over her once again that insidious inertia. It was as 
though the very fibers of her being were dissolving. 

She did not know how long they rode. She knew only 
that the man beside her did not speak, and that the thing 
in his breast, which she could distinctly feel pulsating, throb¬ 
bing, hammering against her shoulder, seemed to be absorb¬ 
ing her, drawing her into itself. And the queer part of it 
all was her quiescence. 

When the motor finally slowed down and stopped, she 
was neither surprised nor excited to note that their objective 
had been The Little Church Around the Corner. The man 
at her side moved. 

“Will you sit here while I arrange matters?” he asked 
softly. 

Kathryn’s eyes met his. She bowed her head. 

She felt him draw the mink rug closer about her, then 
she heard the door open and close. There was a brief instant 
when she thought of getting calmly out and hiring a taxi to 
drive her home. But the instant passed leaving her passive 
under the big fur rug. After all, she thought, it wasn’t half 
the bore the staged affair would have been! Besides- 

She sat suddenly upright an odd mixture of fear and hope 
surging through her. 

The license! He wouldn’t have the license! 

But even as the thought tossed her from emotion to emo¬ 
tion, he was coming down the walk from the rectory, his 
leonine face turned toward her. 

“You didn’t have the—the license!” She triumphed as he 
opened the door and smiled at her. 

“I’ve had it for days. That and the ring. They— 
they’ve been like tangible promises—in here.” He indicated 
a pocket above his heart. Then bending his head toward the 
little church that snuggled so peacefully between high build- 



74 


THE AUTOCRAT 


ings of commerce he whispered rather huskily: “They’re 
waiting for us, dear.” 

His hand touched hers and it was as though he had pressed 
a button that increased the voltage of the swift current in 
her veins. He lifted her gently from the car, and without 
conscious volition she felt herself walking beside him across 
the wet sidewalk, and through the little gate that was held 
open by Peter, the chauffeur. She remembered afterward 
each minute detail of that walk to the church and of all 
that followed once they had entered therein. But just now 
she was an automaton, with events registering dully. 

They were married there in the little church by “the 
marrying parson,” and the clergyman’s wife and Peter were 
the witnesses. That she—a member of one of Virginia’s 
oldest and proudest families—should have as a marriage wit¬ 
ness an ordinary chauffeur, a member of the canaille! The 
very idea would have been revolting to her at a time when 
she was in a normal mood. But she gave it no thought at 
the moment. 

She was neither frigidly reserved nor coolly amused when 
after the ceremony the clergyman’s wife took her in her arms 
and called her daughter . There was something foggily 
pleasant even, in the motherly manner in which the woman 
delivered her into the waiting arms of the man she had just 
married. Very tenderly the man caressed a soft lock of hair 
that had fallen down along her cheek, then very solemnly 
he kissed her. She remembered later how solemn it all was. 
She remembered that Peter had stood nearby and that at a 
nod from Harrington, he had come forward and kissed her 
hand. There were tears in his eyes and he had crossed 
himself many times. 

“It is like a funeral,” she thought in a less numb moment, 
“with me as the corpse, only there are no flowers. They 
seem to be the only thing that John forgot.” 

And then as if she had read the thought, the clergyman’s 
wife broke off two scarlet geranium blossoms from a plant 


THE AUTOCRAT 


75 


in the study window, and fastened one to the bride’s fur 
wrap and the other to John Harrington’s coat. 

It was quite a long time later that memory of these inci¬ 
dents gave them their natural proportions, natural from 
Kathryn’s point of view. 


CHAPTER VIII 


A S they drove away from the little church Kathryn made 
an effort to treat the entire affair with cool non¬ 
chalance. Avoiding the dark eyes that were bent so 
consumingly upon her, she tried to make conversation out 
of indifferent subjects. Finally she mentioned the girl in the 
hospital. 

“I’m glad,” she said, plucking at a button on her mole¬ 
skin coat, “that you were able to effect a settlement for her. 
You’ve no idea what a lot of money a thousand dollars is 
to her. She was almost frightened when she told me yes¬ 
terday about the draft which she had received through the 
mail from you. I think your lawyers must be tremendously 
clever. How on earth did they find out who it was that 
ran her down?” Then without waiting for him to answer 
she went on rather breathlessly. “The interne inferred that 
the motorist might not have been to blame. He said that 
she was in a weakened condition—suffering from under¬ 
nourishment, and might have—have fainted. Do you think 
it is possible that in this age of plenty there can be persons 
half starving?” 

“Anything is possible where money or the lack of money 
is concerned, Plum-Blossom. But you and your charge are 
happy now and we shall not examine life’s problems further 
to-day.” 

“You called me Plum-BJossom. Why?” 

“You don’t like it?” He was tucking the rug closer 
about her. 


76 


THE AUTOCRAT 


77 


“Oh, yes! I think it’s very pretty, very odd. But why?" 

“Because it’s the only name that I can give you that seems 
to belong. Except—the other name which I gave you to¬ 
day.” 

“Harrington!” 

“And you don’t dislike that either?” 

“It’s quite nice. I couldn’t have ordered one that would 
please me more. But the— Plum-Blossom?” 

Harrington was silent for the space of a block, then turn¬ 
ing his oblique dark eyes full upon her, he said: 

“Plum-Blossoms are dainty, aristocratic little things, that 
fly into passions with the slightest breeze, trembling with 
such indignation that their fragrance fills the air, yet under 
calm skies they are waxen-petaled innocence. Their deli¬ 
cate coloring is sometimes found in a woman. There was 
such a woman once, a long time ago in a far distant land, 
and the man who loved her called her Plum-Blossom.” He 
paused. 

“Did you know her? You speak of her as if—as if-" 

“There are several names that would fit you almost as 
well. Larkspur for example. Your eyes are larkspur blue. 
But so too, are they melted sapphires. But Plum-Blos¬ 
som- If you don’t mind, dear, I’d like to give you that 

name to-day along with—my own.” 

“If it pleases you.” 

Kathryn resented his manner of ignoring questions. 
Surely now that she was his wife, she had the right to expect 
less reticence. His wife! How unreal that seemed! How 
unreal everything seemed! It was as though she were no 
longer she! 

That worn moleskin button! She drew her fingers hastily 
away from it. Worn things were vulgar. They offended 
her. She would never again have to wear a garment more 
than once! She could buy and discard at her pleasure. 
No other woman in the world would have such furs as she 
would have. She loved the soft pelts of rare animals. They 



THE AUTOCRAT 


were so satisfying, so incredibly voluptuous! She would 
have— But she paused in her soliloquy to listen. 

In his simple way Harrington was telling her how happy 
he was and how happy he wanted her to be. With a dis¬ 
quieting consciousness of his nearness, Kathryn listened, sur¬ 
prised to find herself not in the least bored. How singularly 
compelling he was! How tempestuous in his calm! How 
paradoxically impassioned in his imperturbable tranquillity! 

She decided, “I am going to find being this man’s wife 
delightfully pleasant.” Then a disturbing thought assailed 
her. 

“My uncle! And Estelle! They’ll be wondering what 
can have happened to me. I’d almost forgotten them,” she 
exclaimed ruefully. 

“I telephoned to them from the rectory.” 

“Oh!” she murmured. 

Did he do everything in that matter-of-fact way! 

“And of course, you told them the news!” her delicate 
nostrils quivered. At least he might have permitted her to— 
to tell the thing— her way. 

Not unpleasantly upon her ear sounded one of Harring¬ 
ton’s rare soft laughs. 

“Naturally!” 

“And they said-” 

“Your uncle said he’d be—blanked. And your aunt-” 

“Estelle!” 

“Said: ‘The hypocrite! I suppose an orthodox wedding 
wasn’t good enough for her. But I’ll forgive her. You 
know, Mr. Harrington, I’m an old-fashioned woman-’ ” 

“Enough! Enough!” Kathryn held up a hand laugh¬ 
ingly. “I can guess the rest.” 

“We are going there now?” 

It was funny, she thought, that the words should come 
out as a question when she had intended them to be a state¬ 
ment. Was his personality, his will, so much stronger than 
hers? Would he in that courteous way of his dominate her 





THE AUTOCRAT 


79 


always? She shrank a little way from him, wrenching her 
eyes from the level, disconcerting gaze that at the instant 
antagonized her. 

“To your uncle’s house?” he inquired with no inflection 
whatever. “No. We are going straight—home.” 

He said the last word as Drina had said one thousand 
dollars / 

“But I must go there-—first!” 

Her gaze clashed back into his. 

“Why, little Plum-Blossom?” He smiled as he might 
have smiled at a spoiled child. 

“I’ve nothing with me!” 

“You’ve everything with you! If you don’t know it yet, 

it’s because I’m a poor teacher. But some day-” he 

paused, and to Kathryn his eyes had become discs of tor¬ 
toise shell, in which glowed tiny flecks of yellows, reds and 
browns,—“some day my arms and my breast and my heart 

will be all the world you will want- at least, I am 

hoping so.” 

The last sentence was wistful, almost a plea, though the 
tone of his voice had not changed. 

“But you don’t understand. I’ll need piles of things at 
once!” Kathryn expostulated, amazed at her patience. 

Her hands were clasped violently together in her lap, and 
John Harrington laid one of his own tenderly over them. 
Dear little Individualist! Dear little Plum-Blossom who 
wore his two rings! She was so disdainfully proud, this 
slim young empress without an empire, yet she had stooped 
to make him her consort. And when that day came, the 
day of her complete understanding—the day on which love 
should have thrown wide the windows of her soul, the war¬ 
ring forces within her would cease their conflict. She would 
be at peace with herself. 

“I—I can’t go to your house in a—a-” 

The hand that wore his rings was struggling for its free¬ 
dom. Reluctantly he released it. 




THE AUTOCRAT 


80 

“Our house, Plum-Blossom!” he corrected admonishingly. 
“Our house and our home. As for suitable clothing— 
you’ll find your maid and essential parts of your wardrobe, 
waiting for you.” 

Kathryn’s lips parted with a quick intake of the breath. 
What a man to inspire awe! Certainly J. Gordon Bradlie 
Junior would never in the world have thought to do 
all this. Her maid and her wardrobe transplanted to her 
new home! A familiar face and familiar things waiting for 
her! She doubted if there was another man on earth who 
could have carried to so perfect a climax the unrehearsed, 
impromptu events which he had that morning directed. 

“Forgive me,” she murmured contritely, “for my lack of 
faith in my pilot.” The capricious hand that wore his rings 
crept back under the long fingers that had just surrendered it. 

The car had stopped and Peter was opening the door else 
John Harrington would have taken the sweetly contradic¬ 
tory, fascinatingly inconsistent young woman in his arms, 
and covered the proud face with kisses. 

Kathryn had seen John Harrington’s mansion many times. 
Indeed, it was one of the show places of the city, and almost 
any street urchin or police officer knew its address. It was 
a masterpiece of architectural art. Frozen music that in 
some mystifying, inexplicable way resembled its owner. His 
powerful personality seemed to have been mixed into the 
mortar, chiseled into the great stone blocks and glazed into 
the jade tile of the roof. 

She remembered, as she looked at the high-carved doors 
under the porte-cochere, some of the tributes she had heard 
paid to this house, and like an empress coming into her 
own after long exile, her bearing became a degree more 
stately, her small head in its rakish hat, held itself more 
proudly poised, the smile on the lovely lips grew a shade 
haughtier. 

The high-carved doors swung open and a man servant 
stood respectfully to one side as they entered. 


THE AUTOCRAT 


81 


“Herbert,” John Harrington paused as the doors swung 
shut behind them, “this lady has just honored me by be¬ 
coming my wife. I telephoned instructions to Mrs. Collins. 
I presume she has shared them with you.” 

The man bowed. His manner evidenced profound respect, 
but it was not servile. Kathryn noticed too, that like 
Peter, he wore no livery, but was clothed in a simple black 
sack suit. She was surprised to note also that he was not 
the usual English butler any more than Peter was the usual 
French chauffeur. Obviously there was some strange demo¬ 
cratic relationship existing between master and servants. 
That was not an agreeable condition to contemplate. More 
than likely the establishment had sorely needed a mistress. 
What a different menage it would become under her admin¬ 
istration ! 

She inclined her head slightly in response to the man’s 
welcoming smile. 

“I am certain,” the master of the house was saying, “that 
all the members of my household will be happy to have a 
mistress here. I know also that you will be loyal to her 
and that she will be loyal to you. 

“Are the rooms, about which I telephoned, quite ready?” 

The butler bowed. 

“Quite ready, Mr. Harrington.” 

“Then will you please tell Mrs. Collins to come at once 
to Mrs. Harrington’s boudoir.” Saying this John Harring¬ 
ton took Kathryn’s hand in his and led her slowly up the 
broad polished stairs. 

Mrs. Collins was already waiting for them at the door 
of the room which they approached. Either Herbert was 
uncommonly swift of foot and tongue; or the lady’s ears 
had not been far off during the conversation that had taken 
place below. 

Something of the same scene was enacted here and Mrs. 
Collins—who, it developed, was the housekeeper—smiled 
joyously and confided to Kathryn in a piercing whisper that 


82 


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she “had always yearned for this.” She had known that 
“Mr. Harrington, God bless the man, needed but this one 
thing to make his life complete.” (It was plain that the 
woman needed proper training.) 

And—oh yes, of course! A maid had arrived with the 
lady’s things but at the moment she was having a bite to eat. 
The child had rushed so! 

To the inquiry as to whether there was anything she could 
do for her, Kathryn replied that she believed not. She 
would wait for Lucy. She would wait. But never again 
would Lucy keep her waiting. She would see to it that 
Lucy did not fall into the ways of this strange household. 

Once alone in the beautiful room which he had ar¬ 
ranged for her, John Harrington took his wife in his arms. 
But he feasted neither his gaze nor his lips on the beauty of 
her. He leaned his closed eyes against her fragrant sunny 
hair—he had tossed her hat into a far corner—and his lips 
pressed themselves tightly together as though endeavoring 
to still an unwonted trembling. 


CHAPTER IX 


yiFTER a tense interval he released her and stood a little 
/"A way from her looking at her for a moment in silence, 
then: 

‘‘You’ll be wanting to be alone now,” he said with tender 
solicitude, and without waiting for her to reply, he turned 
abruptly and left the room. 

Kathryn stared after him, her brows contracted. Then 
a thin smile curved her lips. For once she recognized her 
own inconsistence, and it amused her. That Harrington 
should have left her alone, in her first hour under his roof 
piqued her. He should have been less chivalrous. He 
should have desired above all else, to be with her. Yet 
had he failed to consider her wishes, she would have despised 
him. 

He had displayed ineffable delicacy in his determination 
not to intrude upon her in these first few minutes in the 
boudoir which she was to occupy as his wife. There was 
about it something oddly foreign and unlike anything which 
she might have expected from the men who had wooed her 
so insistently. Ralph Pemberton for example would have 
ensconced her in a big chair and seated himself worshipfully 
at her feet, with apropos quotations from Keats or Byron— 
for in that first moment after their marriage she would be 
either Ralph’s saint or his mistress—punctuated with caresses 
of studied grace. 

And J. Gordon Bradlie Junior! How her Jimmy-boy 
would have fluttered round her, snatched her into a whistled 
bar of jazz, kissed her furiously and apologized meekly. How 
83 


84 


THE AUTOCRAT 


madly effervescent he would have been, and how quickly he 
would have wearied her, satiated her. Poor Jimmy-boy! 

And St. John! Leroy St. John with his string of col¬ 
leges behind him and his thick-lensed glasses in front of 
him! He had been always so afraid of her! And never 
so ill-at-ease as when asking her to marry him. How Leroy 
would stammer and fumble in this moment, were he in 
John Harrington’s place! He would be sure to upset some¬ 
thing and he would embarrass her with his own florid em¬ 
barrassment. But not one of these men would have thought 
it possible that she would care to have these first minutes 
alone. 

She leaned against the arm of a satin damask chair, slowly 
drawing off her gloves, the thin smile still curving her lovely 
lips. 

“You’re a strange man,” she whispered, looking down at 
the pear-shaped emerald and the platinum hoop of diamonds. 
“I wonder if I’m not getting more than I bargained for—- 
more than I deserve.” 

Her gaze traveled to the damask hung windows and then 
to a far-away something that left a shadow on her face. 
It was as though she were looking back down the swift, 
gay life of her mother, and wondering how much of that 
money thirst, that gayety thirst was in her own veins. Per¬ 
haps for the first time in all her years of mother-worship, 
she was sensing something of the real measure of the selfish¬ 
ness which she had inherited. Her proud face saddened. 
Her eyes lifted to a rift of blue sky that showed between 
the curtains, and her red lips parted. 

“Poor little mother! How proud you must be of my con¬ 
quest !” 

Her gaze came back from the blue sky and caught at the 
mauve damask window drapes where it held delightedly. 
She pushed a tawny curl from her eyes and tilted her head 
a little to one side. Funny! She had never guessed how 
beautiful mauve damask and old gold could be! With a 


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85 


quick movement she flung off the long mole-skin coat and 
breathing a little satisfied sigh began to wander about the 
room with appraising admiration, peeping now and then into 
the blue bedroom beyond from the far end of which a door 
opened into a white tiled bath that in turn opened into a 
many mirrored dressing room. It was all just as she would 
have designed it. Everything there reflected her own taste, 
answered her own demands. 

She was still moving inquisitively round the mauve and 
gold sitting room, pausing here and there to touch with 
appreciative fingers some article which happened to especially 
please her, when she straightened suddenly and bent her head 
in an attitude of listening. She had become sharply con¬ 
scious of another’s presence. Distinctly she felt that some¬ 
one had entered the room, in spite of the fact that there 
had been no sound save the faint whisper of her own feet 
against the heavy pile of the velvet rugs. 

Turning her head slowly she looked toward the door. 
It was closed as it had been when last she had faced it. 
But silhouetted against its dark panels was a small yellow¬ 
skinned, slant-eyed boy, his melancholy eyes staring unblink- 
ingly at her, his small hands clenched and held tightly at 
his sides. 

She shivered. It was as though the door through which 
John Harrington had passed had by some strange magic 
been converted into a teak wood panel on which was the 
carved ivory figure of a boy. She gazed steadily at the appari¬ 
tion for an instant, then her shivering stilled under one of 
those rippling laughs so like the lightly touched strings of a 
harp. 

“Who are you?” she asked, holding her hand invitingly 
toward the silent little figure. 

“Me China-boy.” 

“Of course you are!” Again Kathryn laughed. “I’d never 
guess you to be anything less than Mongolian. But I want 
to know your name, why you are here, and where you came 


86 


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from.” She was sweetly persuasive but she was hoping such 
strange figures were not in the habit of appearing at unex¬ 
pected intervals about this house of which she was to be 
mistress. 

“Me Wan Sing,” the boy answered dolefully. “Me 
b’long Mistel Hellington.” 

“You belong to Mr. Harrington? In what capacity?” 

“Me no undelstan’ cap—caplacity.” He stared at her 
still with his almond-shaped, melancholy eyes, calmly ignor¬ 
ing the extended hand and obviously bored at the cross-exam¬ 
ination. 

“I mean,” said Kathryn, now entirely amused, “just how 
do you belong to Mr. Harrington? What do you do for 
him?” 

“Mistel Hellington he velly gleat man. Me do many 
things for velly gleat man.” 

“What are some of those many things?” Kathryn asked, 
trying patiently to solve the position which this youthful 
Celestial occupied in the household of John Harrington. 

There came no expression to the boy’s face but one 
clenched hand made a gesture of weary disgust. 

“Me take messages allee same messengel boy. Me flix 
him loom when valet no flix him light. Me know where 
put all him things. Valet not have much sense.” 

“Then you are a sort of all-round handy man?” 

The boy deigned no reply. 

If this quaint creature was such an important personage 
in her new retinue she must make it a point to placate him 
at once. It was perfectly evident that he had an aversion 
to admitting a new member to this democratic household. 
No doubt he had heard below stairs of his master’s new wife 
and he had called without delay, intending to let her under¬ 
stand that so far as he was concerned, she was not welcome. 

She guessed something of the passionate jealousy which was 
burning so uproariously in the little pagan heart that it 


THE AUTOCRAT 87 

threatened to consume it, and her own heart warmed with 
pity. 

Tilting her head a little more toward him she pursed 
her lovely lips. This was her most entrancing artifice for 
this particular kind of crucial moment. 

“Won’t you come over here and—get acquainted?—I 
want to know all the people who love your Mr. Harrington.” I 
Her voice was sweetly seductive like the cooing of a dove, 
her wonderful eyes were half closed—their long dark lashes 
almost screening them—her white hands were held entic¬ 
ingly, beseechingly toward him. 

Wan Sing’s eyes wavered. Opened wide. And again 
wavered. Opened once more and stared for one expression¬ 
less second at the being who was his master’s wife, then 
they drooped until they were but narrow slits, and slowly 
but surely Wan Sing’s small fists unclosed. 

Another victim was added to the long list of those who 
had fallen before Kathryn’s “music.” 

Very slowly he came to her. Not reluctantly. Just 
slowly as his ancestors might have approached an altar where 
was their most sacred idol. 

When he was within a yard of her he stopped and very 
solemnly he salaamed. Then Wan Sing lifted to the face of 
his beloved master’s wife, a pair of slant eyes that were no 
longer melancholy but filled instead with eloquent adoration. 

Kathryn took the two little yellow hands in her own 
slender white ones and drew him nearer. Neither of them 
spoke for a moment. She sat down on one of the damask- 
covered chairs. The boy sank silently to his knees at her 
side. She smiled with unassumed tenderness and under¬ 
standing. And the oblique eyes looked up with rapture into 
her face. 

“Wan Sing! Wan Sing!” she cried suddenly. “I may 
need you terribly while all here is yet new and strange to 
me! Mr. Harrington is a very great man, indeed, Wan 
Sing, and—and I’m not sure but that he is too great for 


88 


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me. I—I am not very great nor very good myself, Wan 
Sing.” 

The little Chinese boy gazed at her with unbelieving 
eyes. 

“You mallied him,” he said. “You mallied him. You 
Velly gleat woman.” 

She had married HIM and to poor little Wan Sing that 
made her a very great woman. Kathryn wondered if the 
individuality which certain newspapers had called dazzling 
was already submerged. Was she from now on to be but a 
reflector of her husband’s coldly brilliant, fascinatingly mys¬ 
tifying personality? She felt her own individuality reced¬ 
ing—slipping irretrievably away from her and she marveled 
that she had no desire—at least none at the moment—to 
save it from sinking into oblivion. 

“Ah, Wan Sing, I almost believe you. To have married 
so great a man, that should be enough, shouldn’t it? The 
man is greater than everything else.” She looked round the 
luxuriously furnished room, and if Wan Sing could not fol¬ 
low the deeper meaning in her voice—and the sweetness of 
that voice was in itself enough to draw the pagan soul from 
his very body—it was just as well for Wan Sing. 

“No, Wan Sing, there seems to be nothing so great and 
so worth while as your very great man. There was some¬ 
thing else that I believed to be the greatest thing on earth 
but that was before—before I knew the real, very great 
man. Now,—now I am afraid—or perhaps I should say 
glad —that the very great man is on the point of making 
that something seem trifling, insignificant. I believe I’m 
almost going to regret that other something, Wan Sing, that 
I’m almost —going—to—regret his having it.” 

“You no want it, him flow it away.” Wan Sing had 
not the faintest idea of just what it was which his velly 
gleat man had which SHE was going to regret his having, 
but Wan Sing shrewdly guessed that his master would die 


THE AUTOCRAT 89 

to keep regret from the heart of this golden being whom* 
he had brought into his home. 

Kathryn bent down and imprinted a friendly kiss on the 
broad, low brow of the boy. To the little Chinese boy that: 
kiss was a sacred seal. The warming memory of it kept 
his love for her always glowing at white heat even in the 
trying days that came to them later, days on which h« felt: 
in his savage little heart that he should slay her. 

Now as he knelt there his small heart yearned for some 
means of showing to this beautiful lady, who had kissed his 
brow and left a little round spot burning where her red lips: 
had touched him, how very much he loved her—first because 
she was his velly gleat man’s wife (and he had meant to 
hate her for that) and second because she was like the 
saints in the stained glass windows of the chapel where his* 
master sent him each Sunday. There was one saint in par¬ 
ticular that was Wan Sing’s favorite. Always he feasted 
his eyes upon the window where she stood, her little feet 
resting ever so softly on a white cloud. Always he could 
do this when some one prayed and all the people bowed their 
heads. It was then that Wan Sing could adore his stained 
glass love without fear of being reproved for inattention. 
His beloved saint had golden hair, in which shone a star, 
and her eyes were blue and very gentle and very sweet* 
and she held her hands stretched toward him just as this: 
real saint had done a moment ago. And this real one was 
so much like the stained glass one in the Sunday School that 
the boy thought the glass one must be a likeness of the one; 
who had placed a kiss on his brow. 

Suddenly an inspiration seized him. 

Withdrawing one of his hands from Kathryn’s clasp he 
thrust it into the breast of his blouse. After a second of 
fumbling it came out again and it brought forth in its tight 
grasp his most sacred treasure. 

“Me like you much, Saint Lady!” he began almost boldly* 


go 


THE AUTOCRAT 


so great was his exultation at this opportunity to show her 
his love by the making of a great sacrifice. 

“Me like you velly lot, almost same like Mistel Hel- 
lington.” His dark eyes glowed in his saffron face. “Me 
make me velly happy me give you this.” 

Into the hand which she turned palm up for him, Wan 
’Sing carefully, and with pathetic reverence, laid a tiny por¬ 
celain god. 

Kathryn looked down at it curiously then she lifted her 
eyes and gazed into those of the boy at her feet, and some 
small understanding of the greatness of his sacrifice came to 
her. The muscles at her throat contracted and a mist rose 
before the blue eyes that no longer were half veiled. 

“Wan Sing, that has meant much to you, that little god, 
has it not?” 

Wan Sing nodded his closely cropped head. 

“But Chlistians no like me have it.” It was his way of 
trying to make it seem less a sacrifice. 

Kathryn swallowed with difficulty. Then she laid the 
little grinning god back in the boy’s hand, and gently she 
closed the unwilling fingers round it. 

“Christians do not always understand everything, I am 
afraid, Wan Sing. Some day this little porcelain god will 
not mean so much to you. It shall have been superseded 
by another God, the Christian God, but even then you can 
keep it, for the Christian God is very good and very gener¬ 
ous, Wan Sing, and he has none of the petty jealousies of 
which his servants are sometimes guilty. If this little god 
has the power to keep you good now, when you do not yet 
know this greater God, I am sure the Christians would want 
you to keep it if they understood, Wan Sing.” 

For several moments John Harrington had stood in the 
door leading into the bedroom. He had entered through that 
room and hearing the voice of the Chinese boy had hastened 
forward with words of rebuke on his lips, his heart chagrined 
that his bride of a few hours should have had her single 


THE AUTOCRAT 


9i 


moment of privacy thus unceremoniously infringed upon by 
this spoiled little protege of his. But at the door of the 
blue and gold sitting-room, John Harrington had rooted to 
the floor. 

He never forgot what he saw and heard in the brief space 
of time that he stood there, too dumb even to make his 
presence known. 

When he was once more master of his feet he slipped 
quietly away again, leaving alone together the two beings 
who were most dear to him. 


CHAPTER X 


1 ATER upon the arrival of Estelle and Edgar Van Kemp, 
j Wan Sing slunk moodily into a corner, from which 
out-of-reach point he could return the stare of the 
lady visitor who called him a Chinky-boy. He wished pas¬ 
sionately that she would go home, and that she would never 
.again have to come to his master’s house. The man he could 
endure, but the woman—his hostile little heart would have 
none of her. 

When the butler had admitted the callers, Harrington 
accepted their congratulations and handshakings in the draw¬ 
ing-room, then he brought them upstairs to Kathryn. 

Estelle Van Kemp stopped dramatically in the door of the 
isitting-room, her arms extended. 

“Oh, Kathie child! We just want to tell you how happy 
we are, that is, if you are happy.” 

She swept forward with a gesture meant to be maternally 
pathetic. 

“But to be married by a—in a-” she stammered help¬ 

lessly. There didn’t seem to be any word to fit a church 
marriage that was not a wedding. “To be married,” she 
went on rather lamely, “clandestinely!" She was pecking 
3t Kathryn’s cheek with her carefully rouged lips. 

“I didn’t realize, John, that we had eloped.” Kathryn’s 
whimsical blue eyes met the dark ones near the door. “How 
'delightfully romantic!” She turned now to the meek face 
of Edgar Van Kemp, and a rush of tenderness swept through 
tier. 

And then she was in her uncle’s arms, her lovely face 


92 


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93 


buried against his breast, her satin lids closed over eyes that 
strangely burned, her thoughts of the gay little mother 
who had wanted for a son-in-law at least an earl. While 
behind her Estelle Van Kemp was staring with undisguised 
horror at the little Chinese boy who returned her gaze 
steadily, sullenly. 

There followed an hour of tea and muffins, explanations 
and exclamations, effusions and reservations, after which 
Kathryn found herself once more alone. She wandered 
aimlessly into the bedroom where for some time she had 
heard Lucy moving about, and paused beside an inlaid table 
on which had been placed her small scantily filled jewel case. 
She looked down at it thoughtfully, touching it with a 
slender tentative finger. 

“Lucy!” 

She did not look up as the girl sprang joyously from the 
mirrored dressing-room in answer to her call. 

“Yes miss—I mean- Oh, please, may I tell you how 

very happy I am for you?” 

The small red-gold head turned haughtily, the little chin 
was lifted, the eyes half-veiled, their brows delicately quiz¬ 
zical. 

“I—I beg your pardon!” stammered the maid, her face 
flushing hotly, her hands plucking nervously at her tiny white 
apron. 

“Put this jewel box out of sight.” The clear voice was 
smoothly hard. “And, Lucy!” the slim white finger touched 
the box again, “there are some things in it that I—I sha’n’t 
want any more. The pearl brooch and that sapphire and 
pearl bracelet—will you please dispose of them and—give 
the—the money to some needy person?” 

Tears rushed into the maid’s adoring eyes, as she bowed 
her white-capped head. Dear, proud lady, who could smite 
with one hand and caress with the other! How splendidly 
she would reign in this new domain! 

“There will be some telephone calls this afternoon,” Kath- 



94 


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ryn continued; “reporters and friends who will have learned 
through Mrs. Van Kemp of my marriage. I should like 
you instead of the butler, to talk for me. I do not wish to 
speak with anyone. If the reporters are insistent you may 
say that Mrs. Harrington refers them to her husband.” She 
pronounced her new name and the last word of her sentence 
with careful precision, and her clear eyes directed a level, 
unwavering look at her listener. 

For an interval thereafter she stood near a long French 
window, looking down upon the street in front of the great 
house. She had been right about the newspaper reporters. 
Already a procession of them were besieging the place. They 
were calling singly and in battalions, armed with expansive 
smiles and expensive cameras. And she knew that below 
stairs, John Harrington was smiling just as expansively, 
though blandly and non-committally, as he sent them away 
again with the meagerest possible account of his marriage. 

Several times the telephone behind its damaskeen cover 
on the little French table tinkled politely, and she was 
vaguely conscious of Lucy’s voice as it answered. And once 
from some remote region of the house, came the muffled 
sound of a gong—a Chinese gong. She thought of Wan 
Sing and smiled reminiscently. Then Lucy was at her 
elbow wanting to know if she wished to dress—it would soon 
be the dinner hour—and what would madame wear, 

Madame! And only this morning she had been Miss 
Lambert! From henceforth she was to be madame / How 
strange it seemed! How unreal! 

Silently she gave herself into Lucy’s swift hands, and pen¬ 
sively she watched the girl in the mirror, as she brushed 
the shimmering hair into its usual evening coiffure, then 
quite abruptly she ordered it loosed and dressed after another 
fashion, which in turn failed to please her. 

“Do you recall,” she was looking at Lucy in the glass, 
“if I have worn my hair in braids round by head, since— 
during the past few weeks ?” 


THE AUTOCRAT 


95 


“You have not worn it so, madame, for a long time.” 

“Then I should like it so.” 

With nimble fingers Lucy combed the silken strands into 
two long braids like twisted bands of beaten gold, which she 
arranged like a coronet. 

She found her mistress even more difficult to please when 
it came to the matter of what she would wear. First it was 
the Caillot velvet and lace, then it was Poiret’s silver gauze 
creation, and then it was—something else. The decision 
finally rested on the least expensive gown she owned. But 
when Lucy had dressed her in it, she felt that madame had 
chosen wisely. 

It was a white chiffon over white silk, and it was without 
ornaments or trimmings. The graceful throat rose from the 
soft cloud of it like the slender stem of a snow flower and the 
satin-smooth arms, chiffon-veiled, had never looked more 
fascinatingly alluring. 

A light tap on the door startled maid and mistress, and 
at a nod from Kathryn, Lucy went to answer it. John 
Harrington, tall and distinguished looking in his evening 
clothes, came slowly across the threshold, his eyes on the 
beautiful woman in the center of the room. 

“I’m ready for dinner, you see.” Kathryn extended her 
hand to him with a little welcoming smile. 

Without removing his dark eyes from her face, he took 
the hand in his and lifted it to his lips. The fragrance of 
it remained in his nostrils even after the slim fingers had 
been gently withdrawn. His consuming gaze sought her hair, 
held to the shimmering coronet as though it would melt the 
gold, then it came slowly, hotly back to the lovely patrician 
face. 

“You—like my hair so?” Kathryn broke the trying 
silence. 

He did not answer at once. Finally he said: 

“You frighten me. I am quite unfit to share your 
throne!” 


9 6 


THE AUTOCRAT 


Kathryn took a step forward and lifted her face to him. 
But John Harrington did not kiss her. She half guessed why, 
when she saw his face go a little pale and noted the sharp 
intake of his breath. A delicate flush came to her cheeks and 
her eyes sought the door. 

“Shall we go down?” She placed her hand on his arm 
with an unfamiliar shyness. 

He bowed his head, and together they descended in silence 
to the great vaulted dining-room where they were solicitously 
served by Herbert and a wide-eyed maid. All during the 
dinner Kathryn kept trying to imagine the attentive man at 
her side, dining alone at that long table. And she wondered 
if he had never been lonely. 

They rose at last and made their way to the drawing¬ 
room, where Kathryn sat at the piano while he stood at her 
side ostensibly to turn the music, but in reality to gaze down 
at the golden head near his breast. 

Finally he lifted her to her feet and drew her close into 
his arms. 

“Plum-Blossom!” he whispered. “I’m drunk with you! 
Drunk with you!” 


CHAPTER XI 


I T was morning again. The sun filtering through the^ 
filet curtains came aslant the dainty blue and white 
bedroom, swathing in a veil of gold the slim young figure 
that was extending a little foot for the slipper which a maid 
was holding ready for it. 

Never had Lucy found her mistress so easily managed,, 
so sweetly gentle, so almost shy and apologetic. Her fingers 
lingered caressingly over the dainty ankles, and when at last 
she straightened her black frocked figure, it was to add yet: 
another exacting pat to the soft twist of gold that nestled 
against her lady’s milk white neck. 

Mr. Harrington would be returning when his toilet was 
complete, and she noticed how her lady’s eyes wandered now 
and again to the door which led to his rooms, and how 
quickly her lady’s cheeks dyed pink when his rap begged an 
admittance. 

He came in with an odd reassuring little smile. Then: 
“Madame, is it seemly that your husband should find an 
admirer outside your door, and at this early hour!” he asked, 
his gaze playing upon her. 

Kathryn’s lips parted dryly. 

Jimmy-boy! Nobody else would have had the childish, 
courage. He had dared to come here! 

“I—I’m afraid I—don’t understand,” she said unsteadily.. 
John Harrington laughed softly. 

“I do. You did to him what you did to all the other 
members of my household. You enslaved him, you siren. 
Poor little chap! It seems he’s been patiently waiting tor 

97 


•98 


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get a glimpse of either Lucy or me. He wanted to send 
you this.” 

He held out a tin box of candied ginger root. Kathryn 
looked down at it and a little sigh of relief swept her curving 
lips. 

“Wan Sing!” she murmured, smiling up into the somber 
face. 

“Wan Sing!” repeated John Harrington softly, bending to 
loss the curved red lips. 

At a little table in her sitting-room they ate or pretended 
to eat, the breakfast which a servant had noiselessly spread. 
A. pile of morning papers lay on a hassock near at hand, 
and when the sadly neglected meal was finished, he handed 
them to her, and standing behind her chair, he read them 
•with her across her shoulder. 

There were extravagant accounts of the “wedding in high 
society” as one over-zealous paper called it, with comments 
on the surprise which it had brought to those who had been 
eagerly awaiting the arrival of the engraved invitation ta 
what had promised to be the most elaborate wedding affair 
of many seasons. 

Kathryn glanced at the headlines on several front pages, 
then her attention was arrested by some displeasing phrase 
of innuendo on the face of a journal that was known to 
oppose men who fought trusts. She began to read the ac¬ 
count. 

Flatteringly it delved into her own social successes, in the 
manner of biographing royalty. It scaled her distinguished 
family tree. Delicately it urged its readers to regard her as 
one of America’s laureate daughters. Then cautiously it 
drew its sharp contrast. 

“Of John Harrington little is known beyond the five 
years which he has spent in New York City. He is a 
member of no clubs. Has pronounced views upon man’s 
privilege of keeping to himself his hopes, his ambitions, his 
source of income and—the story of his life. Perhaps to this 


THE AUTOCRAT 


99 


strange aversion to publicity can be credited Mr. Harring¬ 
ton’s meager and reluctant account of his marriage.” 

Kathryn threw the paper from her as if it had burned 
her fingers. It had recalled in an ugly way the aura of 
mystery surrounding the man she had married. A wave of 
resentment swept over her. Knowing all there was to know 
about herself he had annexed her—made her his wife—given 
her a name that she was not even sure was his—and all 
without telling her anything whatever about himself. 

She turned abruptly and looked up at him. 

“John, you have never talked to me of yourself,” she said, 
a note of reproach in her voice. 

John Harrington smiled down at her with tender indul¬ 
gence. 

“There have been more interesting things to talk about* 
You, for instance,” he answered quietly. 

“But I want to know all about you, John. A woman 
likes to know everything about the man she marries.” 

“And do you not?” His calm eyes made it very hard 
for her to go on. 

“I know that you have varied financial interests in 
the city and elsewhere. That you don’t give to public 
Charities but that you give to the poor a great deal of money 
about which the public does not know. That you have an 
office downtown, that you have a city and a country home, 
and—a toy factory. But that is not all I should like to 
know, John.” 

John Harrington picked up the abandoned newspaper in 
silence. For one grave second he stared at it, and Kathryn 
noticed that he was holding it upside down, then he looked 
into her face again with inscrutable eyes. 

“Have you allowed this kind of rot to affect you, 
Kathryn ?” 

There was not the faintest note of reproach in his voice 
yet Kathryn felt suddenly guilty and ashamed. It occurred 
to her that this man, this very great man, as Wan Sing had 


IOO 


THE AUTOCRAT 


called him, had permitted the press and the public to remain 
in the dark as to his history because he was great enough 
and brave enough to permit himself the luxury of indiffer¬ 
ence to the curiosity and the opinions of others. It pleased 
her vanity to believe this. 

She felt that only amused perversity had led John Har- 
Tington to ignore this endeavor of the curious to pry into 
his affairs and that he had purposely allowed the veil of 
mystery to grow into an opaque fabric in the hands of its 
weavers. 

“Forgive me,” she cried, reaching up and laying a warm 
hand against his cheek. 

Harrington tossed the paper contemptuously aside. 

“It is odd,” he mused, “that the world refuses to accept 
us at face value. It wants to cut into us that it may examine 
our sawdust. A man isn’t satisfied to know us only in so 
far as we concern him. He demands to know us as we have 
concerned all other men. There may in our past be some 
buried thing that, exhumed, would afford him reason for 
stern condemnation, and rapacious scavenger that he is, he 
would look into the core of us not for the clean seeds of 
perfect fruit, but for this possible rot 

“But,” demurred Kathryn, “if one is sound fruit, shouldn’t 
one be glad to tell the world?” She plucked apologetically 
at his coat sleeve. 

“One should be glad for the soundness. There is no 
reason why he should advertise it unless he is the slave of 
vanity. Besides the world should not need to be told. When 
there is rot at the core there are always surface indications. 
A scoundrel may call himself a gentleman, but that doesn’t 
make him one.” 

Kathryn looked down thoughtfully into her thin china 
cup. 

“No,” she conceded after an instant of silence. “If one 
is sound, those in the world who count, will know. Breed¬ 
ing tells. It is self-evident.” 


THE AUTOCRAT 


lor 


In not all cases, Plum-Blossom. From the best stock 
comes an occasional criminal—a mongrel. Good origin does 
not absolutely insure perfection of the individual. There¬ 
fore the world should weigh and measure the man inde¬ 
pendent of his past or the past of his ancestors. He should be 
accepted for what he is at the time one comes to know him.” 

Kathryn’s gaze had drifted uneasily away from the thin 
china cup, and now it dropped speculatively to the toe of 
her satin slipper. 

“As I have accepted you, John.” She was looking at the 
little slipper as though she were thinking of its shape or 
its color, but a small spot of pink in either cheek betrayed, 
something of her dissatisfaction. 

John Harrington smiled thoughtfully down at her. 

“My one believer!” he said reverently. Then with char¬ 
acteristic directness: “If you knew how much I appreciate 
your faith in me, dear, you would not regret knowing so 
little about me as I have concerned other people in the past. 
But some day when there is nothing more interesting to dis¬ 
cuss, we shall talk about me, and you shall know—all there 
is to know.” 

He glanced disapprovingly at a blue and gold Dresden 
clock on the mantel above the fireplace. 

“Our plans as we made them last night will go awry, 
and to-morrow will not see us starting for our place in the 
mountains, unless I tear myself away from you now. Ar¬ 
rangements are to be made, and there are several things down¬ 
town to which I must devote a whole unhappy, impatient 
hour. Every minute I shall be wanting to run back to you. 
And each minute shall be made to do the work of two.” 

He lifted Kathryn to her feet and for a few tense seconds, 
held her yielding body close, then abruptly he placed her 
back in her chair, and when Kathryn turned to smile up at 
him, he was gone. 

She sat very still for a long time, her arms stretched out 


102 


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on the table in front of her, her eyes now soft as violets, now 
hard and brilliant as sapphires. 

Then came an hour at the telephone. 

With frank liberty intimate friends one after another, 
telephoned to her. She had given instructions to the servants 
that she did not wish to receive callers, and when the bolder 
friends called in person they were politely informed that 
“Mrs. Harrington was not receiving to-day.” 

About eleven-thirty just as Lucy had begun to arrange 
her hair for the day, the telephone demanded Kathryn’s 
attention for the twentieth time. She moved to the little 
desk with a shrug of impatience. 

“Yes?” she inquired into the transmitter of the instru¬ 
ment. 

“Hello!” came back over the wire to her. “I want to 
speak to John Harrington.” 

“But Mr. Harrington has gone out.” It vexed Kathryn 
that a servant below stairs could have made the mistake of 
connecting the caller to her telephone. 

There was an instant’s silence. Then: 

“Are you the new Mrs. Harrington?” 

“Yes,” she answered briefly, thrilling as she had each time 
this name had come to her that morning. 

A short laugh sounded in her ear. 

“You gotta hand it to him for nerve! Playin’ the dan¬ 
gerous game he’s playin’, he ain’t got no right to --” 

“Just a minute, please.” Kathryn’s eyes were hard, scin¬ 
tillating sapphires. “Who are you?” 

“Me? Oh, I ain’t nobody in partic’lar, but I’m a friend 
of the bunch your yellow husband is tryin’ to put outta busi¬ 
ness. And take it from me, lady, the bunch is sure goin’ 
to get him if-” 

“My- What did you call Mr. Harrington?” 

“I called him yellow, an’ he is. White enough on the 
outside to fool people, but yellow clear through. An’ you 




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I0 3' . 

can tell him for me, that we’re goin’ to get him if he don’t 
lay off? Understand? He’s gotta quit-” 

The receiver fell from Kathryn’s listless fingers. She- 
stared down at it with dilating eyes, her face gone white 
as the small alabaster reading lamp just behind her. 

Yellow! 

John Harrington was YELLOW! 

His slanting eyes! His immobility! His mysterious re¬ 
serve! Wan Sing! Wan Sing who “belonged” to him.. 
Wan Sing who was —what to him? 

Unsteadily she got to her feet. With blurred eyes on the 
door, she began to shriek. 

“Wan Sing, Lucy! I want Wan Sing! Do you hear? 

I want Wan Sing!” 

“Wan Sing, madame?” Frankly puzzled Lucy edged 
toward the door, her inquiring eyes upon the white face of 
her mistress. 

“Don’t you understand? The—the-” Kathryn 

paused and moistened her dry lips, “the little—Chinese boy.’” 
Her lovely mouth twisted with the words. 

“Oh! Of course! I shall bring him at once.” 

When the door had closed behind the maid, the tortured 
girl left alone in the room, began to pace up and down with 
quick, spasmodic steps. 

Wan Sing and John Harrington! 

How strange that she had not noticed the likeness. The 
same slant eyes—a trifle less oblique in the man. The same 
peculiar coloring, except that the boy’s skin was a faint shade 
the darker; the same straight lips and white regular teeth. 

John Harrington and Wan Sing were—they were- 

With a cry of horror Kathryn moved aimlessly to her bed¬ 
room, where she fell face down across the bed, her slim body 
writhing convulsively. The mystery of John Harrington 
was solved. He was yellow! She had sold herself to a— 
to a- 

“Velly good mo’ning, Mliss Hellington!” 



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104. 

Wan Sing’s little figure was bowing its head almost to the 
“floor at the entrance to the room. When it straightened, a 
pair of dark eyes, that slanted from the sides of the small 
face downward toward the nose, lifted themselves to the 
face of the girl who had married his beloved master and the 
•straight lips opened in a smile that brought to view a row 
Df small white teeth, extraordinarily perfect. 

“You slend flo’ me, me come in a helly.” 

He made as if to approach her, secure in the democracy 
and good fellowship which had yesterday been established 
between them, but Kathryn lifting herself on one arm shrank 
closer to the foot of the bed, holding up in warning the 
very hand into which yesterday he had so reverently laid his 
sacrifice. 

“Don’t come near me!” she cried, and seeing the little 
•figure turn sadly as if to go, she added breathlessly: 

“But stay, please. I—I want to ask you something. And, 

Wan Sing, you must tell me the truth or-” she paused, 

“or your Chinese god will punish you. Do you understand.” 
Wan Sing looked at her fearlessly. 

“Yes, Mliss Hellington.” 

Kathryn rose and leaning unsteadily against the bed, asked 
very slowly: 

“Wan Sing, what relation is Mr. Harrington to—to 
you?” 

The boy looked puzzled. But almost at once he recovered 
his usual urbanity. 

“Me no undelstan’.” 

Kathryn cast about in her disordered mind for words that 
•would carry her meaning to the boy. 

“Have you lived always with Mr. Harrington?” 

The boy nodded his head, his eyes never leaving her face. 
“Wan Sing, what does he call you?” 

“Wan Sing. Jus’ Wan Sing.” 

“Don’t you remember if you had a—a brother?” 

Someway she could not put the words differently. 



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IC 5 

The boy shook his head and at that moment he was a min¬ 
iature copy of John Harrington. 

“Me b’long Mistel Hellington. Tha’s all,” he volun¬ 
teered. 

Wan Sing’s steady eyes saw the agony in the lovely face 
of his master’s wife and Wan Sing’s heart was very 
heavy and he regretted keenly that he had no other offering 
worthy of this saint with the golden hair who yesterday had 
kissed his brow. 

There could be nothing less than a relationship existing 
between her husband and this almond-eyed boy thought the 
crushed girl as she stared at the slim little figure near the 
door. 

They were brothers. She shuddered as her imaginative 
mind went on to supply the details. 

John Harrington and this boy were born of the same 
parents. One of the parents had been Caucasian the other 

one of course, had been- she shrank from the thought. 

Her hands twisted violently together. 

Suddenly another solution to the problem offered itself to 
her. John Harrington born in such wedlock had when 
grown married a—a—woman of Wan Sing’s nationality of 
which marriage Wan Sing was the offspring. The wife had 
been— Plum-Blossom! that other Plum-Blossom of long ago 
-—Wan Sing the son! 

“Oh!” she cried suddenly, throwing her arms up over her 
head in a gesture of despair. “Fate has begun her pun¬ 
ishment! It is retribution! Retribution!” She flung her¬ 
self again face down upon the bed, her mad fingers tearing 
at the priceless lace spread that covered it. 

Wan Sing’s heart almost stopped. Just what had hap¬ 
pened to his beautiful saint he could not guess, but Wan Sing 
knew that his master’s wife was unhappy, very unhappy, 
and Wan Sing’s one thought was to comfort her. 

Thrusting his hand into his blouse he again drew forth 
the little porcelain deity and hastening to the side of the bed. 



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he laid it in one of the limp hands of his saint, and very 
firmly he closed her fingers upon it just as she had done with 
his fingers yesterday. 

“How dare you touch me, you—you child of a Chinaman! 
You little yellow heathen! You!” Kathryn sprang up with 
wild eyes that frightened the boy even more than her wild 
words hurt him. 

Opening her fingers she gazed down at the sardonically 
grinning god. 

“Oh!” She shrieked. “Oh! Your God! Your god 
and his ” 

A shrill laugh broke from her colorless lips, and the boy 
shrank from the blazing eyes as they rested for one brief 
second upon him. 

“Get out of my sight! Quick! I hate you! Despise 
you! Loathe you!" 

Poor little Wan Sing! His saint was very sick and his 
first thought was of his master. Bravely he started for the 
door, his little heart so heavy that it seemed as if he could 
not carry it. 

“Me bling Mistel Hellington. He flix it up ’medi’tely,” 
he said soothingly. 

“You! You dare to tell him one word that I have said 
and”— Kathryn paused, her breath coming in quick gasps— 
“and I shall kill you! This is my job. Stay out of it— 
you! Stay out of it!” Her wild eyes came back to the 
thing in her hand and she shuddered. 

“Ugh! Take your hideous god and your own heathen 
body out of my sight! At once! Do you hear! And never 
come into this room again. Go! Go! GO!” she screamed, 
and lifting her arm high above her head she threw the little 
porcelain god at the boy’s feet. Then with a moan she sank 
into a lifeless heap on the floor. 

Lucy, who had remained in the corridor, too uneasy to go 
far away, had heard the muffled shrieks and the blurred, 
excited voice coming from the bedroom, but she was too 


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107 


well trained to enter. However, when that last mad shriek 
fell upon her ears, she threw discretion to the winds, and 
rushing into the room found her mistress lying unconscious 
on the floor. In her excitement she took no notice of the 
boy shrinking against the far wall. 

A hundred years, or so it seemed to the boy, he stood 
there. Then slowly his numb body moved. 

Very sorrowfully Wan Sing knelt amidst the debris of 
his sacred treasure. It had crashed against the floor with a 
thud of splintering porcelain which the boy would never for¬ 
get, and now the broken scraps were scattered all about him. 
Very sadly Wan Sing gathered up all that was left of his 
little god. With infinite grief he placed the jagged pieces 
of his long treasured idol inside the blouse where it had been 
so carefully hidden ever since he had first learned that it was 
an obstacle in the way of Christianity. Very quietly, except 
for the clattering of the remnants of the broken god inside 
his blouse, Wan Sing went from the room, his little heart 
aching poignantly under the weight of its first great sorrow. 


CHAPTER XII 

F OR weeks Kathryn was ill. Not with an illness that 
could be reached by medicines but with a malignant, 
cankerous thing that ate into the heart of her and made 
her pray for deliverance by death. 

On that first terrible day, Lucy had telephoned for John 
Harrington and a doctor, and both had arrived before the 
rest of the household learned there was anj'thing amiss. 
All that night Kathryn lay in a condition of coma and 
though both the doctor and the nurse, who had been hastily 
summoned, endeavored to persuade John Harrington to go 
to his room, he remained through the night by the side 
of her bed, caressing her slender white hands, kissing 
with grave tenderness the tumbled mass of golden hair. But 
when morning came, Kathryn had opened her eyes to con¬ 
sciousness and seeing her husband’s face bending over her, 
had shrunk farther under the bed clothes and had cried out 
to him to “go away.” 

From that hour he had not dared to enter the sick room. 
Feverishly she begged the doctor and nurse to keep him away, 
and he had remained outside in the corridor in distressed 
wonder, always hoping that she would send for him. But 
the days dragged by and she never did. 

Little Mrs. Van Kemp, who was told nothing of this, 
came daily, and not being permitted to remain long with 
her silent niece, who lay always with her lovely face turned 
toward the wall, tried to comfort him. 

“She was such a dear child,” she would say, never by any 
chance speaking of her niece in the present tense. “And she 

108 


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109 


was so clever—so beautiful.” And the little lady would dab 
at her eyes with a very damp handkerchief while John Har¬ 
rington who had heard nothing at all of what she had said, 
stared at the rug beneath his feet. 

It was on the third day that Kathryn roused herself with 
thoughts of Drina, the commoner. For an hour she lay 
gazing through half closed eyelids at the wall upon whose 
satin surface her imagination projected a picture in which a 
hideous dragon forced her downward to Drina’s level. 
Drina was calling her “sister” and touching her in the man¬ 
ner of an equal, while from above her, on the heights from 
which she had been so mercilessly lowered, friends of her past 
stared pityingly down at her. She was standing ankle deep 
in the cold gray ash of what once had been her fiercely 
flaming pride. A shower of jewels beat upon her, leaving 
ugly scars on her quivering body, and the pungent perfume 
of plum-blossoms got someway into the picture and pressed 
like an anaesthetic into her suffocating lungs. Skulls pil¬ 
lowed on little heaps of dust grinned at her like mocking 
gargoyles. They were the ancestors of whom she had been 
so proud. Tiny hands of unborn infants shamed her 
with accusing fingers. A pair of slanting dark eyes peered at 
her, now through papery leaves of bamboo, now from a field 
of moonsilvered poppies, and now from the door of a limou¬ 
sine in which was a siren mink robe. 

“Drina!” 

She sat up suddenly with wide-eyed fright. 

She wanted Drina. Sight of poverty would help her. She 
wanted to feel again a moment of superiority. Had Drina 
left the hospital? Would somebody please go at once for her? 
Perhaps if Lucy would telephone—locate her—bring her 
here— 

And as she had hoped, sight of the little proletarian helped 
to reinstate her with herself. Drina came to her that after¬ 
noon, and her naive chatter, her fresh enthusiasms, her frank 
worship—especially the latter—were balm to Kathryn’s 


HO 


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bruised youth, they lifted her a little way out of the mire, 
while the small foreigner’s sublime faith in God and His 
eternal, never-failing kindness, sprayed something of itself 
into her despairing heart. 

Drina was humbly invited to come every day, and her visit 
became the pivot round which each twenty-four hours re¬ 
volved. Vanity began once more to glow, though ever so 
faintly, under the ashes of pride. The humble invitation 
became an arrogant command. And as Self became once 
again important to Kathryn, God became less essential, be¬ 
came in fact an unjust, inconsiderate Being Who had allowed 
her to stray into a horrible maze, with no more protection 
than He would have given to Drina Nazovitch the flower 
vendor! It was preposterous that He should have so far 
forgotten her. Under the circumstances He could scarcely 
expect her to be very thoughtful of Him. 

Sleep came once again to the tired blue eyes and at her 
nurse’s report of it, the doctor rubbed his hands together 
in pleased interest. Sleep! That was what she needed— 
that and the sharpening of her faculties. She was numb— 
something had arrested youth’s effervescence! But let her 
be aroused to an emotion, any emotion, and the lethargy into 
which she had fallen would lift like a wind driven fog. 
There was something fearful in the mirthlessness of the 
twisted smile which writhed about the pale lips at his so¬ 
licitous inquiries. Her long silences, her weird passivity, 

her complete lack of emotion, her deadness- She was 

like a lovely sepulcher in which were ghosts too weary to be 
restless. 

A morning came when her unnatural gentleness vanished 
for a moment, and this sudden, though brief return of her 
old petulance sent its target into an ecstasy of joy. Every¬ 
thing was wrong. Why had Lucy brought a yellow 
gown- Well! What if once she had been fond of yel¬ 
low silk night robes? She hated them now- Never 

again wanted to see anything yellow—nor ivory. Would 




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hi 


Lucy remember? And why had there been no flowers on her 
breakfast tray. Doctor’s orders! From whom, pray, was 
Lucy taking her orders—from her mistress or from a pulse¬ 
feeling fool. And why was someone always pacing up and 
down outside her door? Had the occupants in this wretched 
house no consideration for her? Mr.—Harrington! 

Mr.- He—he must go away from her door at once! 

Did Lucy hear? At once! Was she a prisoner to be thus 
subjected to such vigilance? And the toilet water! How 
many times must she tell Lucy that she would have only-- 

But Lucy with a flimsy, hurried excuse, fluttered from the 
room, joyously eager to tell the nurse and the grave man 
beyond the corridor door, that her lady was better. 

And then came the day when Kathryn was able to be up, 
the day when she could no longer put off seeing the man 
she had married. Every nerve in her body, every fiber of 
her being was taut with dread. But their insurgence was 
mantled by the Lambert poise. Her heart sickened at thought 
of the pending interview but she would not weaken to the 
point of postponing it for even a day. She was strong enough 
to be up. Then she must be strong enough—to see him* 
As always she took a rather grim delight in disciplining her 
nerves, and it was in a moment when her dread of the reck¬ 
oning was greatest, that she sent to him word that she wished 
to see him. 

Examining her tragedy with that characteristic effort at 
honesty which had been so obliging in her self-indulgent past, 
she had been forced to the horrifying decision that she had 
courted her own havoc; that she was no less a cheat than 
was John Harrington; that—and this was her bitterest 
wormwood—she had made her bargain and must therefore 
stick to it, unless—and of this there was small hope—the 
man to whom she had sold herself would voluntarily release 
her. 

Of course she would never live with him, no law of pen¬ 
ance or of fair play could possibly exact that, but she would 


112 


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remain under his roof should he be selfish enough to pro¬ 
nounce so cruel a sentence. Certainly the gods could ad¬ 
minister no greater punishment for her than life under the 
same roof with the man who was—with whom she had- 

As she sat in a deep brocade chair in the luxurious mauve 
and gold sitting-room awaiting him, she thought of herself 
as a prisoner before the bar—a prisoner upon whom judgment 
is about to be passed by an iniquitous, unworthy judge. She 
would make a plea for clemency but should clemency be de¬ 
nied her, she was quite ready to serve her sentence. She 
did not come of whimpering stock. Somewhere back of her 
an ancestor had gone to the guillotine rather than hide from 
those who would unjustly judge him. He might have es¬ 
caped. He might have begged for mercy. He did neither. 
He played the game, and though he lost, who could say that 
he was not the victor! If this thing that had blighted her 
life were retribution, though such a theory seemed like sheer¬ 
est rot, she was quite prepared to do penance, and hers should 
it be demanded of her, would be far worse than a guillotine. 

She smiled grimly, and one ringless hand lifted to her 
slender throat where the fingers explored speculatively. She 
looked ethereal—intangible as she sat there, like a product 
of an aesthetic imagination. One might have expected her to 
vanish into air at a touch. Her eyes were large and question¬ 
ing and violet shadows encircled them. The gold of her hair 
was mockingly brilliant, accentuating as it did the pallor of 
the skin that but a little while ago had boasted the exquisite 
coloring of a sea shell. 

To John Harrington as he entered the room, she had 
never looked so entrancingly beautiful. She was like a tran¬ 
sient guest from another world—with the delicate, colorful 
colorlessness of a smooth white pearl. Hungrily his gaze took 
swift and pitying inventory—the marked change in the girlish 
figure which seemed so lost in the big over-stuffed chair; the 
apparent lifelessness of the ringless hands; the spun gold of 
the hair that swept in such bold, wanton waves away from 



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113 

the temples down across the small ears; the lovely, girlish 
lips with the mirthless smile of something damned; and— 

And then his dark, pitying, wondering eyes met the haunted 
questioning blue ones. 

“My poor little Plum-Blossom!” he whispered chokingly. 
“My poor little Plum-Blossom!” 

He would have fallen on his knees at her feet had she not 
lifted one transparent hand arrestingly. 

“I—I wish to speak to you. Will you—please—sit 
down ?” 

Her voice was not unfriendly but the words sounded hard 
and cold. They beat against the man’s ears like hailstones. 
In expressionless silence he seated himself and with magnifi¬ 
cent self-control, waited for her to continue. 

He had known, of course, that something had happened 
to change her—make her ill—that some shadow had fallen 
between them on the morning after their marriage, yet he 
had thought of no solution to the mystery—-at least none 
that he would harbor . Resolutely he had refused to consider 
the possibility that Kathryn had become his wife for none 
but mercenary reasons, or that a discarded sweetheart had 
come forward with such reproach as would make her regret 
having married another. Whatever it was that had come 
in between them, he would neither imagine nor conjecture. 
Nor would he ask her. If she told him, he would try to 
understand. If she did not vouchsafe an explanation he 
would try to be—generous. 

A tumult of emotions were seething behind the lovely face 
turned toward him, the most violent of which was revulsion 
and not the least of which was pity. 

“I find there are—two alternatives left to me, since I did 
not die,” said Kathryn slowly, gazing down at her clasped 
hands. “One is a complete separation from you, the 

other-” she struggled to steady her voice, “is to live on 

here under the same roof with you-” 




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114 

“Yes?” he prompted when her voice which had sunk to a 
whisper, came to an abrupt stop. 

The tawny head lifted bravely, the blue eyes met his, a 
something in their depths which he did not understand. It 
might have been a challenge. It might have been a prayer. 
He felt the message but he could not read it. 

“But not as your wife!” The voice had come back to 
that indescribable softness which once he had compared to 
thick gold velvet. 

John Harrington’s face remained unmoved. There was 
not the flicker of an expression. Emotions may have been 
rampant within him, but they made no outward display. 
His oblique dark eyes were fixed inscrutably upon the w T hite 
face lifted so tensely to his. The rise and fall of his breast 
became imperceptible, as though he had stopped breathing. 
His sinewy hands rested with apparent lightness on the 
arms of his chair. If the veins in them swelled and visibly 
pulsed under the force of a sudden rush of blood, there was 
no one near enough to see. And if the old ivory of his skin 
appeared to pale a little—it might have been due merely to 
the flood of light that flowed into the room as the sun came 
suddenly aslant the windows. 

Kathryn waited for him to speak. At his continued silence 
she shivered, clasped her hands together a little tighter and 
went determinedly on. 

“To remain here under the condition named would be— 
perhaps, very difficult—for—for both of us. I am willing, 
however, to—stay on—if—if you wish it so.” 

The long days in bed, more especially those recent days 
that had come under Drina’s subtle influence, flashed in swift 
kaleidoscopic thought across Kathryn’s mind. During a 
single instant she lived again the hours through the long 
minutes of which she had planned this gigantic, terrifying 
penance for herself—a penance which too would be a pun¬ 
ishment for the man who had wronged her. Certainly noth¬ 
ing else offered the promise of such poignant suffering. To 





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US 

live on under the roof of the man whose slant eyes and 
ivory skin filled her with excruciating horror! 

She was giving herself, she reflected, a gambler’s chance 
for freedom. She was putting the case into the hands of the 
man whom she had, without the requisite love, deliberately 
planned to marry—the man with whom she had been willing 
to exchange ancestry for gold. 

There was the possibility of mercy—the chance that he 
would acknowledge the wrong he had done to her—that he 
would humbly confess his origin. She could not herself 
speak of the horrible gulf that separated them. And it was 
not necessary that she should. He must, of course, know 
that she had learned his dreadful secret, and he would under¬ 
stand that it was not a subject which she would care to 
discuss. If, however, he should be gallant enough, generous 
enough, man enough to wish to efface himself, she would 
try to forgive him and to think kindly of him. He might 
even desire to make some financial arrangement for her— 
settle something— 

Drina’s astonished face was projected suddenly against 
the screen on which these thoughts were flickering. It was 
as though Drina had come into the room and demanded to 
know of her if she w T ere really so sordid a mercenarian that 
she could ever so fleetingly consider a—financial settlement! 

She shrank from the epithets which flashed accusingly past 
her, but her instinct for self-preservation was too resilient 
to long cower before even so fearful a foe as self-scorn. This 
self-preservation acquitted her. There was immediate jus¬ 
tification—a soothing amnesty. 

She sighed and it was as though she had repeated her last 
sentence. 

Still John Harrington did not speak. He sat as one 
stunned. And Kathryn wrought to that nervous tension to 
which a prolonged silence is unendurable, asked wearily: 

‘‘Which shall it be? .. It is for you to decide.” 

Her listener moved slightly. His opaque eyes, neither 


n6 


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windowing nor reflecting what lay in his heart, caught her 
flickering gaze and held it by sheer mesmeric force. 

“Is there—somebody else?” 

His voice was of its usual monotonic mellowness and even 
in that moment standing as she was on the very brink of 
her Rubicon, Kathryn could not but acknowledge its fasci¬ 
nating appeal. 

“No,” she answered. “There is no one.” 

“You—you do not love me,”—the long hands gripped 
their chair arms yet more tightly—“but neither do you love 
another?” 

Her inquisitor leaned a little toward her, a faint hope 
flaring up in his heart. If she loved no other man, then 
beyond doubt it was merely a case of fright. She had 
awakened too late to the understanding that marriage is not 
a sufficient excuse for the intimate relationship that must 
exist between husband and wife. Another thought tried to 
possess him but he fought it off. Never would he think it. 
Never would he so insult his own self-respect. 

It was as he had decided. She was timid—frightened in 
this new relationship. She was a strange, proud creature and 
she was suffering. 

It was his crime. He had given her too short a time to 
learn to love him. He had carried her off to the altar by 
force. He had been brutal. And yet—that first night—he 
could have sworn that she loved him. He had made a mis¬ 
take. He should have been more patient. She was so worth 
the winning. But she was offering him another chance, and 
how painstaking he should be this time. He would keep her 
here and he would—never frighten her again. He would 
question her no further. It would be cruel to probe deeper 
into her shrinking girl heart. He would be tender where 
before he had been impatient, and when one day the scared 
little bird fluttered voluntarily back to his hand, he would 
have no further favor to ask of the gods. 

He stood up. He must not tire her. He must leave her 


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117 

alone. It would be a poor beginning if he forced his pres¬ 
ence upon her. Never was frightened bird tamed in that 
way. He must be considerate of her wishes, oblivious of his 
own. 

‘‘There being no one else in your heart”—an encouraging 
smile moved across his lean face, “I shall be happy if you 
stay on here. This is your house—your home. Do with it 
what you will. I shall arrange a small part of it for myself 
and at no time shall I enter the rooms sacred to your occu¬ 
pancy unless you—invite me. You are-” 

“I shall never invite you!” Kathryn’s voice was a 
shocked, hopeless whisper. She had gone weakly limp like 
a man who, though prepared to receive his sentence, needs a 
supporting arm in the moment when it is delivered by the 
foreman of the jury. 

“You are mistress here,” went on her companion, “and I 
wish you to remain. You need have no fear that I shall 
trespass, or intrude. This house was deeded to you the day 
after our marriage and if one of us must go, it shall be I. 
But if you will tolerate my living here too, I shall be happy 
that one roof covers us.” 

With a low bow that was strangely eloquent of the emo¬ 
tion which his face could so perfectly conceal, John Har¬ 
rington went slowly from the room. 

Left alone in the chamber that had been so thoughtfully 
and so carefully prepared for her, Kathryn stared at the 
closed door and shivered. 

At times, during those first tragic days in bed, a hot fury 
had flamed up within her against the man who had allowed 
her to marry him ignorant of the thing which set him apart 
from the men of her world. He had deceived her! He had 
permitted her to accept him as one of her kind. He had 
brought her into a house where a miniature copy of himself 
would look at her forever with the slant eyes of an alien . . . 
At those times she could have slain him. 

But there had been other times, as now, when there had 



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118 

been no blinding fury—no consuming anger—no mad desire 
to slay. Times when she had felt the blame centering about 
herself. Times when looking back upon the mercenary 
motives which had been so splendidly backed by her egotism, 
she had found herself unclean. 

She shut her eyes, trying fiercely to think. But it was 
as though she were looking down at her own corpse. Im¬ 
pressions, emotions came and went, but coherence of thought 
eluded her, as if the voice of her mind had become night- 
marishly mute. Then once again instinct for self-preserva¬ 
tion came to her rescue. 

She sighed and a deprecating little smile touched her lips 
as her brows lifted. He had accepted her sacrifice and he 
had—made a pretense of innocence. Had in fact affected 
an ignorance as to what it was that was separating them. 
Pretended not to have guessed that she had learned his— 
origin. Or . . . was it possible that believing himself to be 
her equal, he had actually convinced himself that there was 
some other reason for her new attitude toward him! 

That was it! Of course! Recognizing, acknowledging 
no gulf between his race and hers, it was but natural that 
he would refuse to consider the possibility of revulsion upon 
her discovery that he was not of her people. Still—if it were 
true that he denied the existence of that social gulf, why had 
he always so carefully avoided reference to his race—to his 
past? If he were honest in his feelings of equality, why his 
silence—his lack of candor? Why did he allow himself to 
be an object of mystery even to the woman whom he pro¬ 
fessed to love? 

Kathryn’s restless fingers sought her palpitating throat. 
It was all very confusing, very tiring. Her gaze moved 
slowly round the beautifully appointed room. Well—she 
would abide by his decision, so long as he made no effort 
to obtain absolute jurisdiction over her physical being. 

Her gaze paused appreciatively here and there—on bronze 
lamp, silken rug, or time-worn tapestry, and under the soft 


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119 

tips of her fingers, the pulse in her throat began to throb 
less violently. She wondered vaguely what future tragedies 
this room would hold for her. And she sorrowed dully that 
never again could she feel the touch of his hand, his lips— 
She felt inexplicably cheated because death must forever be 
preferable to physical contact with the man whose wife she 
was . . . She grieved that fate had so tangled the skein of 
her existence. 


CHAPTER XIII 


T HE great mansion that had been pronounced a master¬ 
piece of architectural beauty became a house divided 
against itself. 

John Harrington had without further comment moved 
his personal effects to a part of the house quite distant from 
that occupied by Kathryn. At first he made it a point to 
meet her occasionally at luncheon but very soon he became 
aware that even this short noonday tete-a-tete was displeas¬ 
ing to her. After that he no longer rode home at noon but 
remained downtown until night when he would return to a 
meal over which he presided in solitary dignity, sitting alone 
at the table whose length seemed to become greater on each 
succeeding day. 

Kathryn dined out at night and never returned to the big 
house which others called her home, until decency compelled 
it. She would remain at a social function until most of the 
other guests had taken their departure but even then it was 
not always at a satisfactorily late hour, and she could not ask 
her chauffeur to drive her around the streets the remainder 
of the night. But she breathed the atmosphere of her new 
home as little as possible. 

With feverish energy she threw herself into the whirlpool 
of social affairs. She dared not be idle and alone. To her 
imaginative mind she was running a race with retribution. 
Once, vampire-like, it had almost taken the life out of her, 
but she had lived. Perhaps it had allowed her to have this 
apparent victory, for some diabolical reason of its own. 
More than likely it was now sitting back on its haunches 


120 


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121 


and smacking its lips in anticipatory enjoyment as it watched 
the color of health coming back to her cheeks. At times 
she imagined this, whereupon with renewed determination, she 
would double her speed. True, she was already paying, but 
retribution might exact something further—something yet 
more horrible from her. 

She was invited everywhere, and she went everywhere. 
She was the gayest of all the gay. If her laughter was too 
frequent and too easily aroused no one noticed. Never had 
she been so entertaining, so scintillating, so fascinating. Her 
swift repartee, her amusing stories, her brilliant words of 
wit or of smart philosophy were repeated by her numerous 
admirers. She was deluged with invitations. Each morn¬ 
ing her boudoir, like the dressing-room of a popular star at a 
popular theater, was banked with flowers. Some of the 
floral tributes had little notes hidden away in their fragrant 
hearts. Notes that begged for the first dance at an ap¬ 
proaching ball, or for the sweet privilege of driving with 
her some morning in the park, or perhaps just the wistful 
request to be permitted to have tea with her that afternoon. 

Each night when she entered her boudoir and aroused the 
drowsing Lucy she was mentally panting for breath. All 
day she ran so fast that it is small wonder she was ex¬ 
hausted both mentally and physically when the wee small 
hours drove her home. Yet exhausted as she was sleep 
eluded her. It came coquettishly close to her, toyed with 
her until she would become drowsy then with a tantalizing 
jeer it would skip away like a mischievous will-o’-the-wisp 
and leave her staring into the dark where yellow-faced men 
wearing long queues, threatened her with dripping hatchets 
the while they tried to force her feet into ridiculously small 
iron-bound shoes. 

When sleep would steal pityingly upon her at last, she 
would sink onto its restful bosom as one slips off into uncon¬ 
sciousness. In the morning Lucy, stealing into the room, 
with cautious, noiseless feet, would gaze in puzzled concern 


122 


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at the sleeping face of her mistress, on which like a dried 
tear, lay the shadow of unrest. 

Thus the race went on. There were times when Kathryn 
imagined the breath of a dragon, a fearful Chinese dragon, 
was fanning her cheek and at these times she would turn 
with wild, frightened eyes to the first excitement at hand. 
But usually she managed during the day to keep far enough 
ahead of the dreadful thing. It was only at night when the 
race was in abeyance, that she had time for thinking and— 
thinking was the thing most to be avoided. 

What relationship existed between John Harrington and 
Wan Sing she tried not to guess. The problem’s intricacies 
hurt her. There was an occasional moment in which she 
was tempted to go to John Harrington and demand an ex¬ 
planation—to demand also that the little Chinese boy be sent 
away. But at very thought of it she felt the man’s baf- 
flingly inscrutable eyes upon her face, and instantly she knew 
that his lips would divulge no more than she could read in 
those eyes. Too, she was not sure that she wanted to know 
the hideous details of his birth—his life. As to Wan Sing— 
there was the chance that upon her demand, he would be 
banished, removed at least from the house where his presence 
was to her so unwelcome. But something beneath her selfish¬ 
ness rebelled at thought of denying the only home he knew 
to the small adoring pagan who, however much he pained 
her by his presence, was still able to touch her jangling 
heart strings and set them to soft music with his mute evi¬ 
dences of worship. 

Wan Sing never sought her out, but she knew that he 
lurked in dark corners that he might look upon her as she 
Came and went. She knew that she was still his stained 
glass saint come to life. Lucy had told her in a timid, ten¬ 
tative way, of the boy’s unabated worship. She had drawn 
several word pictures of Wan Sing which could not fail to 
touch Kathryn’s vanity and even to arouse in her a reluctant 
tenderness for the small admirer who for hours, sometimes 


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123 


until long after midnight, would sit with somber, stolid 
patience huddled into a forlorn little heap on the top step 
of the wide stairs, waiting to see his golden lady safe inside 
the house. 

“It’s him that cleans your dressing table trinkets every 
day, ma’am,” Lucy vouchsafed one morning as she was buf¬ 
fing the delicately tinted nails of one of her lady’s inert 
white hands. “And I’ve seen him holding your ivory comb 
against his little cheek and saying nice things to it about— 
about your hair, ma’am. Once he found one of your golden 
hairs, and he-” 

“Those ivory things, Lucy—I want them taken away— 
out of my rooms,” Kathryn glanced frowningly at the carved 
ivory toilet articles which furnished her dressing table. 
“And Lucy-” she paused and made a pretense of exam¬ 

ining her nails. 

“Yes, miss—madame.” Then hesitatingly: “I thought 
you’d prefer them to the tortoise and gold, because they were 
a gift from Mr. Harrington. But if you wish-” 

“I do wish, Lucy. And about Wan Sing—he is not to 
enter my rooms. It is enough that I must stumble over him 
in the halls and downstairs. There are no services that I 
require of him, and none that I will tolerate from him. Is 
that clear?” 

Lucy, bowing her head, wondered again as often she had, 
why her lovely lady so hated the little boy who counted no 
privilege so great as that of being permitted to clean the 
delicate instruments that were aids to his beloved saint’s 
toilet, or to brush the dust from her dainty satin dancing 
slippers. 

To Wan Sing it was stranger and more difficult of under¬ 
standing than his Chi Foo puzzle box. That his master’s 
wife could be displeased when he ran so eagerly to perform 
for her some little service, sorely troubled him. If he brought 
a shawl because he had heard her say the library or the 
living-room was cold, she would shrink from his outstretched 




124 


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hand and, ringing for a servant would have the shawl taken 
back to her room and another brought in its stead. If he 
ran ahead of her down a corridor that he might open a door 
for her she swept past him without seeing him. If he 
found Lucy doing something which he felt might hurt HER, 
and he commanded her in the name of his master to desist, 
he was ordered by a golden voice from the depths of an 
adjoining room, to “go away.” 

Once he had come upon Lucy in the act of cleaning mud 
from a pair of little russet street shoes with the blade of a 
pen knife, and he had implored her to stop. His breath had 
caught in his throat in his fear that the loved little shoes 
would be damaged. And in that moment his master’s wife 
had come swiftly into the room, and taking the knife from 
her maid’s fingers, had snatched up the mud-stained shoe 
and slashed it again and again with the sharp blade. Then 
in white silence she had gone away leaving him and Lucy 
almost intimate in their mutual awe. 

“Wan Sing—him likee you velly much!” he had been 
wont to chant at his every opportunity. “Next Mistel Hel- 
lington Wan Sing him likee you.” But no longer did his 
voice chant those wistful things to her, for he had come to 
understand that she did not wish to hear them. He could, 
however, still watch her from a distance or from the shelter 
of some dark recess. And then one day- 

Kathryn came upon him where he stood, shrinking against 
the wall, at the head of the stairs, and instantly she was like 
some volcanic thing in sudden eruption. Hot flames of fury 
burst from her, scorching the very soul of the boy whose 
brave eyes never wavered, though his heart was abject. 

“Why do you hang about watching me?” she demanded. 
“Has your master asked you to spy upon me? If he has, 
you may tell him for me, that I am my own mistress and 
that I shall come when I please and that I shall go when 
and where and with whom I please. I sha’n’t have you 
watching me, do you hear?” 





THE AUTOCRAT 


125 


Kathryn towered above the little figure like an outraged 
empress, her long chinchilla wrap, loosed at the throat, fall- 
ing away from her bare white shoulders, her eyes glowing 
ominously, her breath coming sharply from between her 
teeth. And poor little Wan Sing felt no less guilty than the 
criminal who is being rebuked by a merciless judge. With 
hanging head and drooping shoulders he went from her pres¬ 
ence and on up to his room at the top of the house, where 
in an ecstasy of remorse and grief he touched his head again 
and again to the floor before the lithographed picture of 
The Christ of this—to Wan Sing—never to be understood 
white race. Then for a long time he knelt in utter dejec¬ 
tion on a prayer rug, which his master had allowed him to 
have and which he kept spread out beneath this picture, and 
if the sad, patient face of The Christ seemed to smile down 
at the little half heathen kneeling there on the prayer rug 
the while he confessed his imagined sin to the God of the 
Christians, it was perhaps merely because the curtain, flut¬ 
tering at the window with the first breath of spring cast a 
wavering, uncertain light upon the lithograph. 

“I leckon she is slick in the head,” he would say sorrow¬ 
fully on occasion. “I leckon she is slick in the heart, too, 
she no allee time look well.” Once he broached the matter 
rather timorously to his master who looked at him with 
expressionless eyes and vouchsafed no answer. 

If John Harrington noticed the change in Kathryn he 
made no comment. He knew, of course, that she went about 
a great deal; that she danced almost nightly; that now and 
then she entertained rather lavishly at the Ritz; and that 
she abhorred sight of him and of Wan Sing. He w T as sorry 
for Wan Sing. He knew that her open dislike was a 
tragedy to the boy. He was sorry for Kathryn. She was a 
butterfly—brilliant, gay, restless, but with bruised wings. 
For himself he had neither the time nor the inclination foi 
pity. Big things were brewing in Wall Street where he kept 
ao office; he had one or two important foreign matters to 


126 


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adjust at Washington; and there was always the toy fac¬ 
tory—the one place where he could find both relaxation and 
recreation—the place in which out of all the world he felt 
most at home. 

It was late one rainy afternoon that a fresh terror was 
added to that which already was torturing Kathryn’s nerves. 
Canceling several engagements Kathryn ensconced herself 
deep in a pile of silken pillows on a chaise longue in her pri¬ 
vate living-room and tried vainly to read the season’s favor¬ 
ite novel. It was of no use. She could not concentrate. 
She caught herself reading over and over again the same sen¬ 
tence—the same paragraph. 

“I shouldn’t have stayed in,” she chafed, her blue eyes 
drifting moodily across the top of the book to the rain 
splashed window. “I should have gone to the Pembertons 
with Jimmy-boy. He’d have laughed at me, with me and 
for me. And as always my Jimmy-boy’s frank worship 
would have reinstated me with myself. No earthly degra¬ 
dation could leave the tiniest blot on me, with Jimmy there 
to X-ray past it to my F. F. V.” 

For an interval she watched the rivulets that twisted and 
interlaced down the plate glass of the window an arm’s 
length away, musing half-deprecatingly, half-exultantly upon 
J. Gordon Bradlie Junior’s blind adoration. Estelle had 
begun to nag a little about the affair. But Estelle didn’t 
guess, of course, how very much her husband’s niece was in 
need of a stimulant. And certainly J. Gordon Junior was 
a delightful exhilarant. 

“And there’s Cyril—Cyril McLennon and his soothing 
deference. What would I do without that shy homage?” 
A smile that disparaged her vanity touched her lovely lips. 
“A woman may be defeated at every game of her choosing, 
but she is never qute a failure as long as there is on earth 
a man who will love her, or—who will make love to her. 
I may hold daily autopsies over my marriage, but that does 
not make a defunct of Romance.” 


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127 


She lifted herself to an elbow and continued for an instant 
to look at the wet window and the rain-soaked world be¬ 
yond, then tossing her book to the floor, she rose, stretched 
her slim arms into the air, let them drop suddenly to her 
sides, and wandered aimlessly out of the room. Outside her 
door she paused, and her gaze traveled appreciatively along 
the walls where hung priceless tapestries. It was nice to be 
mistress of such a house as this one. It was nice to have 
one’s financial problems solved—to know that all the beau¬ 
tiful things which money can buy and which she so dearly 
loved, were hers for the taking. It was nice to feel sure 
that never again could she be haunted by that dread specter 
poverty. After all, poverty might have been worse than— 
than— 

She shut her eyes for a moment, and there was a con¬ 
vulsive movement of her shoulders, then with the draped ends 
of her chiffon negligee fluttering like pink clouds about her, 
she went on down the broad stairs to the long reception room 
below, and thence to the library. 

The door leading into the library was ajar and as she 
approached it she was astonished to hear the sound of thin 
high-pitched voices in a strange, singsong language. Then 
through the narrow aperture she caught a glimpse of one 
of the speakers—a flat-faced, slant-eyed man in jacket and 
pantaloons of black sateen. A Chinaman! Several China¬ 
men —from the sounds issuing through the crack of the door 
—in her house—the house of a Lambert . Wan Sing and— 
and his master—they were not enough to degrade her—they 
must invite their friends! Dazed with shame and terror, 
and blind now to the age-old tapestries, and the priceless 
rugs upon which she walked, she made her way back again 
to the floor above. 

There followed two wretched days during the interminable 
hours of which she sat huddled in a big chair that was drawn 
to a far corner of her boudoir, staring like a frightened child 


128 


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at the door which connected the room with the rest of the 
house. 

Then again she spread her wings. She flew back into her 
mad orbit with even greater effulgence. Never had New 
York society been so gay, and Kathryn Lambert Harring¬ 
ton held its gilded reins in her two slim hands. In a word 
she was New York society. Never had fashion demanded 
such prodigal spending, and John Harringtons wife was 
fashion. Her extravagances were imitated wherever un¬ 
limited resources made it possible. Her jewels, her furs, 
her gowns—they made fashion history. Men, when they 
looked at her, either shook their heads and wondered if John 
Harrington owned Aladdin’s lamp, or they succumbed to 
her charms, her music, her witchcraft, and regretted that 
it was not they who paid her bills. And all the time under 
her brilliance, under her gay, splendid plumage, a malignant 
cancerous thing was eating the heart of her. 

Her lust for the beautiful was being satisfied, her hunger 
for social power was being appeased. But there were in¬ 
trospective moments in which she no longer made an effort 
to deceive herself. Moments of honest weighing and meas¬ 
uring—the result of which filled her with self-loathing. 
There always followed, however, an impotent rage at having 
been cheated, and this rage effaced the momentary self-shame. 

Then uneasiness began to feed upon her—uneasiness that 
the world might one day learn her shameful secret. She 
could not bear the thought of that. She tried to calm her¬ 
self with the reassurance that John Harrington was too 
clever ever to let the world share the story of his origin. 
That she did not arraign the cause of her sufferings, and 
demand of him the utmost caution and secrecy, was because 
any conversation on the subject would be intolerable to her— 
not to he endured. And so she went on day by day— 
laughing, dancing, flirting—drugging herself with whatever 
excitement came her way. 

She found time between her many social functions to see 


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129 


Drina occasionally, and no little of the two occupants of the 
one-time barn near Gramercy Park. Drina was not blind 
to the fever in the brilliant, restless eyes, nor deaf to the 
emptiness of the tuneless laugh, but she said nothing of it 
even to Cyril who secretly thought eyes had never been so 
lovely nor laughter so sweet. 

Drina, on Kathryn’s advice, had abandoned her flower bas¬ 
ket and with a part of her thousand dollars had opened a 
small flower shop in the arcade of an office building on 
Broadway, near Wall Street. Cyril had learned with many 
reproaches for her silence, of Drina’s accident. And Drina 
smiling up into his eyes had taken the reproaches silently 
and been happy because of them. The Cyril who reproached 
however was not the gay-hearted Cyril of their poorer days. 
And Drina felt the difference without quite knowing wherein 
it lay. It was an intangible something that tantalized her 
with its elusive yet certain reality. 

Quite casually Kathryn had dropped Cyril’s name here 
and there and with well simulated surprise she would say: 

“What! You have never heard of Cyril McLennon? 
Why, my dear friend, Cyril McLennon is on his way to 
being the world’s greatest sculptor! He is a Michael An¬ 
gelo. He paints both on canvas and in marble, and he does 
it with the sure touch of a genius. His studio contains 
many interesting studies. I daresay you might pick up some¬ 
thing there quite worth while, that is, if you care to pay 
the price.” 

It was Kathryn who had gone about the littered studio 
and appraised the various studies, demanding that Cyril 
take not one cent less than her valuation. 

And people had begun to come to the studio in the build¬ 
ing that had climbed the ladder from livery stable to art 
studio. And often behind him the visitor left a narrow 
slip of paper and whether that paper was green, white, yel¬ 
low or blue mattered not, always the figures written after 
a scrawled word or two equaled in amount many times that 


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130 

which the former livery stable had ever dared charge for the 
hire of even its best carriage. Estelle Van Kemp had come 
to the studio, had bought a bust of her “beloved Nelson” 
and had gone away prepared to rave about the “perfect dear 
of a man” and his “ripping studio.” And she had raved— 
raved madly and happily. 

Of Kathryn’s life Estelle Van Kemp had little time to 
think. She was always quite busy on her own account and 
the possibility that there could be anything wrong with 
Kathryn’s marriage never dawned upon the little lady who 
glorying in the girl’s social position, was quite content to 
reflect some of its splendor. In her heart she was really 
inordinately proud of Kathryn and she never tired of telling 
her grave stay-at-home husband what wonders his niece might 
have accomplished had she lived in an earlier age. 

“Even Charles would have ceased to be enchanted with 
Nell Gwynne could he have met Kathryn,” she would say. 
“As for Henry the Eighth, he would have taken her for his 
’steenth wife and she would hare had his adoring head 
chopped off that she might reign unhampered.” 

Edgar Van Kemp was usually asleep in a library chair 
drawn close to the fire, when his little wife said these things 
upon her return after an evening at some affair where her 
niece had reigned supreme, but Mrs. Van Kemp cared not 
a whit for that. She liked to talk and she deemed it neces¬ 
sary to have somebody present when she talked. If that 
somebody happened to be sleeping she was none the less 
eloquent. Always her own pink ears listened with flattering 
interest and, highly entertained, she would continue the mono¬ 
logue until the subject was threadbare. 

“Edgar,” she began one evening at dinner, “what do the 
newspapers mean when they refer to John Harrington’s toy 
factory as ‘Harrington’s business alibi’?” 

Kathryn’s uncle gazed for a moment intently at the 
browned squab on his plate. When he looked up there was 
a slight frown on his face. 


THE AUTOCRAT 


131 

“Have we changed chefs again?” he inquired a bit peev¬ 
ishly for one who was usually most unobtrusive. 

“You don’t care a fig about the chef. You’re just evad¬ 
ing. What is the mystery about John? I think it’s per-* 
fectly maddening to be kept in the dark about things.” 

“But you’re no more in the dark where Harrington is con- 
cerned, my dear, than the rest of us. Personally I think 
it’s impertinent on the part of the public to be so curious 
about a man’s private affairs.” 

“Of course you do, Edgar, because you’ve never been, 
curious about anything. But there isn’t any reason, is there,, 
why John Harrington should be so reticent? Is he involved 
in some other business of which he would be ashamed if the 
public knew?” 

“I’ve told you, Estelle, that-” 

“You’ve told me nothing at all!” \ 

“Well then, can’t we drop the subject?” Again the squat) 
became to Edgar Van Kemp a thing for minute study. 

“No. John Harrington is my dear Kathie’s husband— 
though goodness knows one would never guess it by the way 
he treats her, never going anywhere with her, and never 
even coming here to see us, her only relations—and I’ve 
the right to know what the newspapers mean by their innu¬ 
endos. Just why is the toy factory called his alibi?” 

Edgar Van Kemp continued to scrutinize his half dissected 
squab. 

“Perhaps,” he said, “the press suspects that Harrington 
hoping to pull off some smashing deal, runs a toy fac¬ 
tory-” 

“As a blind!” 

“Rather let us say, to divert attention from his more im¬ 
portant activities.” 3 

“I see,” Estelle Van Kemp drew in her pretty lips. 
“He’s interested in some gigantic scheme which mightn’t bear 
investigation, and so he poses as a maker of toys.” She 
stared sternly at her husband as though she felt that in some 



132 


THE AUTOCRAT 


way he were to blame. “Of course people are piqued that 
even Kathryn tells them nothing. Everybody knows that a 
toy factory couldn’t make enough money to pay for one- 
third her extravagant indulgences. Yet when one hap¬ 
pens to inquire of her—quite tactfully, of course—the source 
of her husband’s income, she lifts her eyebrows in that arro¬ 
gant way of hers, and—changes the subject.” 

\ “Kathryn is extraordinarily intelligent.” 

“There’s small proof of it in her absurd silence. It’s 
neither wise nor safe,” Estelle’s voice took on an impressive 
note of solemnity, “for people to be so mysterious.” 

“I fail to see the danger, my dear. John Harrington is 
a very popular man. They tell strange stories about him 
on the lower East Side, where they know and understand him 
better perhaps than our uptown will ever know or under¬ 
stand him. I am told that even Sing Sing has furnished 
recruits for this factory of his, and that no man ever appeals 
to him in vain for work. The newspaper men are really 
fond of him. But it is a part of their business to find 
out all they can about—anything or anybody that is of in¬ 
terest to the reading public.” 

“I was at his house yesterday,” mused Estelle, who had 
not listened beyond her husband’s first defending sentence, 
“when a box from Tiffany was delivered to Kathryn, and do 
you know she wouldn’t have opened it at once if I hadn’t 
insisted. A new jewel has ceased to be a novelty to her. 
Imagine,” her voice demanded awed attention, “it was an 
emerald and diamond chain of the most exquisite design and 
workmanship. And what do you think she did ? You could 
never in the world guess. She shivered. Actually shivered 
as though the bauble reminded her of some terrifying thing. 
You don’t suppose,” she leaned over the table and her words 
sank to a whisper, “that it was because she considers his 
money tainted! Made in some dreadful manner!” 

Edgar Van Kemp laughed. 

“Her repugnance to his money—if she is really suffering 



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133 


from such an unlikely thing—doesn’t seem to interfere in 
the least with her lavish spending of it. But it may be that 
she objects to it only in the form of—emeralds.” 

“You’re positively ridiculous! I’d as soon be dead as to 
have so little curiosity! I’m sure I don’t know, Edgar, 
whether you’re inane or simply facetious. And I think if 
I loved you less I could hate you terribly.” 

A Nazimova gesture ended the outburst. Then with a 
sigh Estelle Van Kemp fell into a silence, and though she 
meant her husband to interpret it as a maternal brooding 
over his dead sister’s child, in reality that silence cloaked 
feverish plans for keeping close in the wake of society’s bril¬ 
liant young leader. 





CHAPTER XIV 


T WICE during those spring weeks John Harrington 
took Wan Sing to the great toy factory which he him¬ 
self so loved to visit, and though as usual he and Wan 
Sing had on these occasions, little to say to each other, each 
had an odd sense of being brought closer to the other. To 
the little Chinese boy these two visits were trips to heaven. 
Sedately, with eagerness well concealed, he walked through 
the world of dolls and ships, miniature locomotives and troops 
of tin soldiers, tongue tucked thoughtfully in a smooth cheek, 
breath fluttering spasmodically through parted lips, small 
hands clenched in an effort to steady them when excitement 
threatened to make them tremble. 

“Ah!” breathed Wan Sing gazing with rapt reverence 
at a beautiful golden-haired doll. “Same like Mliss Hel- 
lington!” 

John Harrington’s sombrous eyes followed those of the 
boy, and a queer, enigmatic smile relaxed the straight line 
of his thin lips. 

“Do you think so, little Pekinese?” he challenged mus¬ 
ingly. “Is she not, Oh Manchu, more like a river girl of 
Shanghai! The doll, I mean,” he explained hastily at the 
boy’s gesture of protest. “Or even”—he hesitated—“a de¬ 
mure little Cantonese that though brazen at heart, makes 
a most modest bride for the man who has bought her with 
a handful of gold?” 

The boy shook his head. 

“She same like Chlist saint— same like Mliss Helling- 
ton!” 

► 


134 


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i 35 

“Ah, Wan Sing, love is so often astigmatic!” commented 
Harrington a little sadly, “Its vision is so apt to be 
faulty.” 

The boy at his side did not understand the meaning of 
the words, but then, John Harrington so frequently said 
things, especially of late, which made no sense to the puzzled 
little brain when it tried to draw coherence from them. He 
was a very strange man, but oh, a very, very good man was 
this John Harrington, The Magnificent. 

On the day immediately following Wan Sing’s second 
visit to the big factory near the river from the mouth of 
which great ships set out for Wan Sing’s far distant China, 
Harrington, again at his plant, was making his way to a 
living-room which he had caused to be fitted up at the 
rear of the top floor, when his attention was arrested by a 
saucy-faced, undersized girl whose back was humped. 

The dwarfed young person looked up inquisitively. Har¬ 
rington smiled. In return the girl eyed him appraisingly. A 
new foreman no doubt. Her eyes narrowed shrewdly. New 
at least to the department, which meant that she might easily 
play a prank upon him. 

“Gee! I’d like to get a drink,” she grinned at him across 
a thin sharp shoulder. “I wonder if youse’d hold this wig 
a minute? I dassent lay it down. They’s glue everywhere 
and it’s gotta be stuck on that blue-eyed beauty over there.” 
With a nod she indicated first the wig in her hand and then 
a doll that lay on a corner of her work table. 

“I won’t be gone more’n a jiffy, mister.” 

She thrust the yellow wig into Harrington’s hand, and 
a smile flashed across her wizened little face. Then with 
the quickness of a sparrow, she was gone. 

The small wig had been generously smeared with glue 
and John Harrington’s fingers stuck to the yellow strands 
that were so like the golden hair the touch of which would 
never depart from his lips, the fragrance of which would 
never leave his nostrils. 


136 


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“Butterfly or saint from a stained glass window! Always 
to me she will be woman—my woman—my Plum-Blos¬ 
som !” 

A shadow rippled the smooth surface of his flat calm. 

“Gossip is going to stain her pretty wings if I don’t watch 
her—guard her against her own recklessness. And love 
. . . love may creep upon her from another direction . . . 
Strange, imperious Plum-Blossom! It is a game of my pa¬ 
tience against your restlessness—my love against your pride! 
And the game has only begun. There will come a day-” 

“Was I gone long?” solicited a high-pitched, squeaky little 
voice. “I met Sadie O’Grady in the rest room and she told 
me a funny story. If youse was a goil I could tell it to 
you.” There was a naughty gleam in the wicked eyes that 
looked up at John Harrington from above a humped back 
and a pair of sharp little shoulders. 

Harrington stared down at the girl unseeingly for an 
instant, then he smiled admonishingly. Had he frowned at 
her, the girl would have understood. Had he discharged 
her on the spot she would have been little disconcerted for 
was she not the best piece worker in her department, and 
would not old Brownie hire her right over again? Had he 
railed at her in her own vernacular, she would have answered 
in like manner or—she would have begged his pardon. 
But he did none of these things. He gazed at her silently 
until the mischievous eyes could no longer look into his, then 
in tones silken as the petal of a poppy, he said: 

“And some there are who work all day—and some who sip 
the honey.” 

The girl stared after him as he moved away, and her 
small frame convulsed with shivering. 

“Gawd!” her thin hand made the sign of the cross. “For 
a minute they was somethin’ terrible in that man’s face. 
It was jest as if a gate had opened in a stone wall, and a 
funeral percession had begun to file through. And then he 
says them crazy words and —slams shut the gate” She 



THE AUTOCRAT 


*37 


reached for the blue-eyed doll to which she gravely confided: 

“Somebody’s give that man a raw deal, Mary Pickford. 
Somebody’s give him a raw deal.” 

On the top floor of the building, in the room that looked 
out over the river—John Harrington gave himself up to his 
mood—a favor to which he seldom indulged himself. Lean¬ 
ing a little forward in his chair, hands clasped together be¬ 
tween his knees, grave, handsome face turned toward the 
sunlit harbor, his eyes conjured up other scenes, his ears 
made of the factory noises quite different sounds. 

For more than an hour he sat there without moving. 
Looking out upon sweet scented gardens where wind blown 
plum-blossoms carpeted the ground; upon wide rivers 
swarmed with sampans; upon rice fields soft as moss, beneath 
azure skies; upon picturesque low-roofed, many-eaved houses. 
Listening the while to the rasping of bamboo leaves chafing 
in the breeze that came whispering down the rivers; to the 
mellow boom of ancient temple bells; to the silvery wistful¬ 
ness of a far distant flute; to the pat-pat pat-pat of the bare, 
running feet of coolies. 

And into the moon magic of the blossom-scented gardens, 
along the rivers—blurring the swarm of sampans, rising in 
a mist above the rice fields and the low-roofed houses, came 
a lovely patrician face exquisitely framed in spun-gold hair. 
And against the rasping of bamboo leaves, the mellow boom 
of temple bells, the wistful call of flute and the pat-pat of 
coolie feet, rose a tinkling accompaniment—a haunting, allur¬ 
ing laugh that rippled up the scale and down again like the 
lightly touched keys of a piano. 

# * * # * 

John Harrington, long a bitter and forceful opponent of 
corrupt politics, had been mentioned in several newspapers 
as a prospective candidate for mayor. That part of the 
public which avowedly stood for clean politics was clamoring 
for his nomination. 

“So Mr. Harrington is to run for mayor!” exclaimed 




138 


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Vivian Pemberton across her powder puff as she transferred 
her interested gaze from the mirror through the aid of which 
she had been redecorating her dance-warmed face, to Kathryn 
who, tall and straight, an arm’s length away, was being re¬ 
lieved by a trim maid, of her smoke-blue wrap. 

Dining elsewhere Kathryn had come to the Humphrey 
Merlins’ dinner dance a little late. Downstairs at the porte 
cockere she had found J. Gordon Bradlie Junior waiting for 
her with a tense face and a gripping nervousness in his 
fingers that hurt her when he touched her arm as she stepped 
from her car. 

“Don’t go in, Kathryn. Let’s ride about for an hour. I 
•—I want to talk to you,” he had said. And she had called 
him an absurd boy and had forthwith dismissed her car. 

She looked back at Vivian Pemberton now with cool, 
steady eyes, but there was volcanic seething in her heart, a 
deafening hammering in her ears. Understandingly she re¬ 
called J. Gordon Junior’s tense face and gripping hands. 

“Certainly not!” she replied coldly. “Mr. Harrington 
has not the remotest idea of running for mayor.” 

Vivian Pemberton lifted her pretty brows. 

“Really! But, my dear, one of the morning papers quoted 
him as saying that he was quite willing to do his duty toward 
his adopted city. It seems that he said this at a meeting 
of laborers on the east side. But perhaps the newspapers 
got it wrong. They do make such miserable mistakes! Did 
you see what The Gazette had to say about my reception 
for Lord Delcy? Why, my dear! it didn’t even have his 
name spelled correctly—as for the decorations of the ball¬ 
room-” 

“Mr. Harrington has no intention of running for mayor,” 
repeated Kathryn. And her pulses echoed her words as 
though they were trying to hammer them into some sort of 
physical belief. Under her apparent calm she was shivering. 
Mayor! Politics! Oh! he couldn’t do it! He wouldn’t 
dare! His history would be raked and scraped to its unclean 


THE AUTOCRAT 


i 39 

core! It was a mistake! A dreadful mistake! She had 
neither read nor heard anything- 

“More’s the pity! He would make a splendid mayor, 
Kathryn. And it’s high time New York had such a man as 
John Harrington as its head. He’s so unafraid, and yet so 
—so reserved!” Kathryn flinched. “By the way, just what 
does he mean, Kathie, by ‘his adopted city’? Of course, we 
know that he is not a native of New York, but—it—it’s 
such a queer phrase, don’t you think?” 

“Queer?” For an instant the pearls round Kathryn’s 
throat seemed to be choking her. She thought of them bit¬ 
terly. What a price she was paying for them! “I fail to 
see anything queer about it. Perhaps he would better have 
said that New York had adopted him, for it has, hasn’t it?” 
she parried, suavely, leaning gracefully toward the long 
mirror, as with slow deliberate fingers she rearranged a silver 
strap that had fallen from its place across her smooth white 
shoulder. 

“Indeed it has! New York is quite mad about him, even 
if he doesn’t deign to be confidential with it. Kathie, you’re 
the luckiest girl in the world! Everything you can possibly 
want and an adoring husband who gives you along with all 
life’s other good things, unlimited freedom. Doesn’t even 
criticise your admirers, does he?” 

“My admirers-” began Kathryn, but she was inter¬ 

rupted. 

“What arc you two gossiping about?” It was Estelle 
Van Kemp just come up in a fluffy yellow tulle and a 
wrinkle-proof smile. “My word! One would think, Kathie 
dear, that you were afraid of being a wall flower, wasting 
time as you are up here! As a matter of fact there are no 
less than a dozen men waiting for you at the foot of the 
stairs.” 

“And couldn’t you substitute?” Kathryn’s eyes were no 
longer cool blue pools, they were brilliant as living coals. 



140 


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She smiled dangerously. “You don’t in the least look like 
an aunt in that flapper frock!” 

“Hear her, Vivian! Nasty, isn’t she! My Kathie knows 
so well how to be sweetly catty.” Estelle Van Kemp made 
a deprecating gesture. Then, accompanied by an exclamation, 
one of her small plump hands fluttered out to Kathryn. “A 
new string of pearls. Pink ones! Oh, Kathie, what a 
fortunate creature you are!” 

“So I’ve just been telling her.” Mrs. Pemberton laughed. 
“But she didn’t agree with me. She-” 

“Didn’t I ?” Kathryn’s voice was not the thick soft velvet, 
that John Harrington loved, it was thin and silken and 
colorless. “That was because Estelle broke in upon us.” 
Again she touched the silver strap at her bare white shoulder, 
then taking a final look in the mirror at her beautiful face 
and her straight young figure in its scintillating folds of silver 
lace, she forced a little smile and moved toward the door. 
“And now,” she said, “for those men at the foot of the 
stairs.” 

She found them there, just at Estelle had described them, 
impatiently waiting for her. But it was J. Gordon Bradlie 
Junior who carried her off. At another time she would 
have preferred Vivian Pemberton’s dashing young brother- 
in-law, for Ralph Pemberton could always lead her in such 
an interesting way, to the very edge of things, and nowhere 
was there a better dancer; or even Leroy St. John who had 
a way of looking at her through his thick-lensed glasses as 
though she were a newly discovered orchid too delicate for 
human touch. But now as her eyes met the troubled gaze 
of J. Gordon Junior, she knew that here was the one person 
upon whom she could vent the tumult that was surging with¬ 
in her. She was angry and hurt and she wanted to anger 
and hurt in turn. If she should scratch Ralph Pemberton 
he would most likely strangle her the while he quoted to her 
in his softest voice, “A Rag, a Bone and a Hank of 
Hair.” While Leroy St. John would answer her scratching 


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141 

with a stammer that would sound like a prayer. J. Gordon 
Junior would do neither of these things. He would give 
scratch for scratch, stinging word for stinging word. Jimmy 
would quarrel with her. And vaguely, unreasonably she 
wanted to quarrel. If she could go home to Harrington and 
say to him the scathing things that she would be wanting to 

say- But she couldn’t. That was out of the question. 

Besides it would get her nowhere, accomplish nothing. He 
might be worse even than Ralph Pemberton or Leroy St. 
John. She could imagine him doing terrifying things to her 
the while his lips unstammeringly said a prayer to Buddha. 

In a corner behind a screen of palms, she turned to her 
companion savagely. 

“You’re going to try to talk to me, Jimmy, about this 
mayor business. Don’t! I won’t have you talk about it, 
do you understand?” 

J. Gordon Junior arranged a chair for her and drew up 
another for himself before he made answer. 

“It’s got to be talked about, Kathryn. Gentlemen do 
not go in for politics, and-” 

“Oh, but they do, Jimmy-boy! Lord Delcy-” 

“In England, yes. But not in America.” J. Gordon 
Junior’s chin thrust itself out stubbornly. His troubled eyes 
sought Kathryn’s blue ones, oblivious to the storm signals 
that flashed back at him. 

“Then it’s time that America copied England in the busi¬ 
ness of politics. Certainly England’s politics—Great Britain’s 
politics are not as corrupt as ours.” 

“You’ve been reading yellow journals! Muck rakers!” 
J. Gordon Junior was dignifiedly scornful. 

“But if there wasn’t any muck, they couldn’t rake it very 
well, could they, Jimmy-boy?” 

“Then you want this mysterious man that—that made you 
marry him, to-” 

“He didn’t make me marry him, Jimmy dear. It was I 
who did the making. I made him marry me/'* Kathryn’s 



142 


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voice was still silken but it was of a crisp silkenness that was 
oddly taunting. 

“Oh, yes! I’d forgotten how very much you needed his 
money!” flared J. Gordon Junior hotly. “I had but a paltry 
million-” 

“You mean—your father had but a paltry million!” 

J. Gordon flushed. 

“It’s the same thing!” 

“Oh, no. Your father might choose to will it to some 
one other than his infant son. Fathers are sometimes just 
that inconsiderate, you know.” Kathryn folded her slim 
hands loosely in her lap. They were trembling, and they 
were inclined to clasp at each other violently, but she made 
them obey her proud will. They must give no testimony 
as to the tempest that was raging beneath her cool insolent 
exterior. 

Than “infant son” perhaps no other words could have so 
goaded the youth who sat rigidly beside her, and because she 
knew that she had drawn real blood, her own hurt became 
less poignant. She was a little repentant. 

“I—didn’t mean that, Jimmy-boy,” she began, but the hot 
youth aborted her pity with an angry grunt. 

“You—she-cat!” he muttered, a suspicious catch in his 
voice. “You selfish she-cat! You deserve all you will get 
when the muck rakers begin to tell the public all about the 
man who bought you with-” 

“Stop!” Kathryn had sprung to her feet. She stood now 
staring at him as he too stood up, but she was not seeing 
him. She was seeing newspaper headlines—vicious, glaring 
headlines, with pictures of herself as the wife of the “alien” 
—the man who was-- 

“Oh!” she cried, her hands clasping hysterically together 
at last, “I—I can’t stand it! Take me home, Jimmy-boy! 
Please take me home!” 

And J. Gordon Junior looking into the lovely, terror- 





THE AUTOCRAT 


i43 

blanched face was overwhelmed with instant tenderness and 
contrition. 

“Kathryn darling! Kathryn!” He took the two tense 
hands in his and gazed miserably into the tragic eyes of 
cloud flecked azure. “I’m a brute, dear! Forgive me.” 

The girl he loved made no sound, but the tawny head 
inclined until the small round chin touched the iridescent 
pearls that lay gleamingly against her milk white throat. 
Then her lovely lips moved and J. Gordon bent his head to 
catch the murmured words. Her wraps? Of course! He 
would send for them at once. Would she sit here and wait? 

Again she inclined her head, and the look in the eyes that 
she lifted to his made it very difficult for J. Gordon Junior 
to refrain from gathering her up in his arms and trying to 
still the trembling of her lips with the pressure of his own 
quivering ones. 

When he had gone she made an effort to think. 

John Harrington was going to run for mayor! And the 
muck rakers would . . . She pursued the thought with tense 
application, her proud young figure slumping brokenly on 
the straight little chair behind the screen of palms, her 
gaze fastened terrifiedly on a circlet of diamonds that glistened 
on a finger of her left hand. 

Never would J. Gordon Junior forget her as she sat there, 
a blur of silver lace and gold hair against the shadowed 
green of palms. His heart ached at thought that words of 
his could have so crushed her. That he who loved her so 
much could have thrown at her such an epithet as she-cat 
was almost unbelievable! That any words of his could 
wound the brave pride of her, seemed even less possible. 
Remained the fact that she was indeed crushed and that it 
was he who had laid her low. Not once did it occur to 
J. Gordon that his lovely lady was ghost haunted—that 
tragedy lay heavy upon her. And never having seen the 
Lambert poise so vanquished, he could but marvel at what 
he believed to be the result of his brutality. 








144 


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She did not speak during the drive to her home, and 
though the man seated beside her longed to soothe her, to 
touch her hand, to get down on his knees at her feet and 
beg her pardon, he dared to do none of these things. She 
seemed too oddly remote, too strangely unconscious of his 
presence. Once when the smoke-blue wrap of chiffon and 
velvet fell loose at her throat, he slipped an arm silently 
round her and drew it again to its place, his fingers trembling 
as they touched her cool flesh in the second it took to fasten 
'the jewel studded clasp, his heart pounding hot blood to his 
^temples. But there was neither smile nor reproof in the 
lovely face that was marble-white under the faint light which 
came from the tiny frosted electric bulbs nestling in the gray 
velour above their heads, and when his hands had dropped 
from the jeweled clasp at her throat they fell together be¬ 
tween his knees where they gripped each other tightly. She 
neither smiled nor spoke as he lifted her from her car before 
the high carved doors of the great house on the Drive, and for 
more than an hour after those heavy doors had swung shut 
behind her, he stood across the street in the narrow parkway 
bordering the river, and looked miserably up at a window 
where a light filtered lacily through long filet curtains. 

All that night Kathryn lay staring into the dark with hot 
dry eyes, thinking—thinking—thinking! But it was not a 
crushed nor a broken Kathryn who on the morning sent 
word to the butler that she was breakfasting below stairs 
with Mr. Harrington. She was imperious as a queen who 
knows that she has but to command to be obeyed. 

Upon entering the breakfast room John Harrington gave 
no evidence of surprise at finding his wife seated at the table 
apparently waiting for him. From his manner one might 
have gathered that this was an every morning custom. He 
bowed politely and seated himself in the chair which the 
butler had drawn out for him. 

Kathryn reflected that most men under a condition as 
trying would have resorted to some trite remark about the 


THE AUTOCRAT 


i45 

weather. This man, she conceded, was never guilty of banal 
or superfluous speech. She had heard or read somewhere 
that strangely enough, his silence never caused embarrass¬ 
ment or uneasiness unless he intended it to do just that. It 
lay within his power, it seemed, to make his silence in¬ 
describably soothing, or to make of it a thing that could 
drive men to a fury which would be their own undoing. 
She watched him fascinatedly. Marveling at his superb 
poise, his grave urbanity, as he turned his handsome head to 
speak to the butler. 

“I shall not want the newspapers. Put them outside in 
the car, please. And Herbert—don’t you think you could 
find some flowers for the table?” 

She had almost forgotten how exquisitely mellow his voice 
was. The liquid tones of it somehow caressed her. 

“But you have told me that you preferred not to have-” 

began the butler with that freedom of speech which the 
master of the house democratically permitted. 

“Flowers when I am alone,” he interrupted casually. “But 
when Mrs. Harrington is breakfasting with me-” 

He did not finish the sentence. It was as though he had 
said: 

“Flowers are but mockeries when she is absent, but when 

she is here- Ah! let the fields and the hot-houses help 

me to welcome her!” 

Courteously he passed the silver toast rack to Kathryn. 
Always when they met he was punctiliously polite, and some¬ 
times as now his politeness both soothed and accused Kath¬ 
ryn. Paradoxically she felt uneasily comfortable. 

“Thank you.” She took a slice of the crisp brown toast, 
forcing a half smile. 

The breakfast room was in the east side of the house, 
and on three sides it was leaded glass. In the yellow sun¬ 
light that streamed into the room, Kathryn’s tawny hair had 
the sheen of burnished metal. Little silken hairs seemed to 
rise from her head, stretching themselves against the sun like 





1^6 


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tangled threads of golden wire. Harrington had heard about 
a case in which a great surgeon had repaired a leaking valve 
of a human heart with finely spun wires of purest gold. 
His gaze lingered on the glistening hair broodingly. 

Perhaps behind those wide apart, unfathomable eyes imagi¬ 
nation was painting strange, fantastic pictures, twisted, 
futuristic things of human hearts and tiny living golden 
wires. 

“You look,” he said finally as his dark eyes lowered and 
clashed into hers, “as if you hadn’t rested. You are not 
ill?” 

“I-was never so well!” Kathryn tore her gaze away 

and devoted herself to the buttering of her toast. 

It was going to be more difficult than she had supposed it 
would be. She was annoyed that she should find him so 
strangely attractive. Even his eyes were magnetic. She 
felt that almost she would be compelled to hang onto the 
table to keep from being dragged by them from her seat. It 
was absurd, of course! She was fanciful this morning. His 
eyes were not magnetic! They slanted! They were terrify¬ 
ing! And his hair—it swept back from his temples like 
the folded wing of a crow . . . That was it! His hair was 
too hideously black! His teeth too hideously white! She 
hated him! She loathed him. She wished that she might 
rise from her chair and lunge across at him with her little 
pointed fruit knife! 

“You are going it rather hard, I’m afraid,” he commented 
quietly, and Kathryn noticed that he avoided her name. 
She wondered if in his thoughts she were still “Plum-Blos¬ 
som.” 

“John,” it seemed odd to her to be speaking thus familiarly 
to a man whom she so seldom saw, then remembering rather 
bitterly that the very bread between her fingers at this 
moment was his, she went on breathlessly, “I didn't sleep 



THE AUTOCRAT 


i47 


well last night because-” she found herself unable to 

proceed. The thing seemed rather unreasonable when it had 
to be put into words. 

“Because-?” her husband raised his dark head encour¬ 

agingly. 

One long sinewy hand lay like a piece of old ivory against 
a splash of white doily, and Kathryn noticed a peculiarity 
about the thumb. It appeared to be but little shorter than 
the slim tapering fingers. She stared at it wonderingly until 
the hand moved and she caught in the polished mahogany 
at the edge of the doily, the reflection of a dragon ring* She 
went cold as though a sudden draft of damp air had swept 
past her. 

“Because,” she continued, looking bravely up into his eyes, 
“I heard during the evening, that you intended taking up this 

political offer and I-” Again she could not go on. She 

wished he would not look at her so steadily. 

“Yes?” 

Sometimes the unruffled patience of the man could be more 
trying she thought, than the thing that in police parlance was 
called by the undignified name of “sweat-box.” 

“It is my wish that you remain well out of politics.” 
Kathryn sighed relievedly. It was over and settled. 

“May I ask why?” her husband lifted his coffee cup and 
drinking from it, gazed at her across its steaming top. 

There came to Kathryn a wild, impatient impulse to tell 
him what she knew of his history—to make him understand 
how impossible politics with its notoriety and its biography 
X-raying, must ever be for him. But the forcefulness in 
the leonine face opposite, made the impulse retreat unsatis¬ 
fied. 

With a start of amazement she saw that her expressed 
wish had not been enough. She must explain. She, whose 
wish had so seldom been questioned. 

How could she make him understand? Either he was 


148 


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too stupid to realize any danger—and Kathryn had heard dis¬ 
cussed and even now sensed the limitless intelligence of the 
man—or too dogged determined and reckless of consequences, 
too unashamed to care. 

True—he should consider her! Any blow to his name 
would fall most heavily upon his wife but—she would not 
—could not bring herself to the depths of humility that 
pleading for consideration would mean. She could not stoop 
to that—she who had been always so carefully considered. 

She shrugged her shoulders with an air of wearied hope* 
lessness. 

“I have a horror of politics and should not enjoy being^ 
the wife of a politician.” In spite of a brave effort at star¬ 
ing back at him her eyes sought her plate. 

Involuntarily Harrington looked away. There were little 
mottling spots of red on the pale cheeks of the girl, that 
somehow accused him. 

“Is that your only reason?” He inquired fingering the 
letters which lay beside his plate. 

Kathryn rose, leaning with her hands against the little 
breakfast table. 

“Yes,” she said dully, her lovely face tense. 

“Then,” her husband turned his unfathomable eyes once 
more upon her, “I am afraid I shall have to go on!” 

Kathryn’s lips parted, her eyes dilated, and for a confused, 
unbelieving second, she stared at him. Then inclining her 
head in a proud bow, she straightened her slim young figure 
and moved slowly from the bright little breakfast-room, with 
all the dignity of a queen who accepts defeat gracefully. 

The door closed behind her and instantly against the 
impassivity of the man’s face there was projected from the 
magic lantern of his soul, a fierce battle of emotions. Faint 
lines gathered about the narrowed eyes, deepening until they 
were distinct, living things that struggled for supremacy 
against the steel will that would conquer them. 


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149 


“The flowers, Mr. Harrington!” The butler was at his 
elbow. “It took a moment to arrange them. I hope I am 
not too late-” 

Harrington looked dully round at the great shallow bowl 
of sweet peas—their perfume thick in his nostrils. He nodded 
his head. 

“Take them away, please. And those bamboo shades— 
drop them. There is too much sunlight.” 

Soundlessly Herbert let down the split-bamboo screens, 
shutting out the sunshine that had made golden threads of 
Kathryn's hair—threads that were like tiny golden wires 
with which broken human hearts were sometimes mended. 

Upon entering her room Kathryn found everything 
arranged for her toilet. Silken, cobwebby undergarments 
hung on the back of a chair, silk stockings, and smart low 
shoes lay on a hassock close by, a frock of apple green organdie 
was spread out upon the bed beside a wide straw hat that was 
strewn with waxy green leaves. In the bathroom door stood 
Lucy waiting to dress her. 

Kathryn walked to the window of her sitting room and 
looked out. Down below in the river, a trim little yacht 
was swinging at anchor, her pennants flying ostentatiously, 
while a little way beyond a tugboat was breasting the cur¬ 
rent and the out-going tide. There was a somber forceful¬ 
ness about the tugboat that reminded her of the man she had 
just left in the breakfast room, and it came to her suddenly 
as she stood there, that the yacht was like herself—trim and 
useless, pleasure-seeking, vain. Yet . . . 

She tried to find excuses for the yacht—to prove its 
superiority—to properly value its aristocracy. But her mind 
had run into a cul-de-sac where it groped helplessly, blindly. 

“Madame has not forgotten the garden party?” Lucy 
approached her timidly. 

Kathryn made a little meaningless gesture. 

“But madame was to stop at Sea Cliff on the way to 



THE AUTOCRAT 


i$o 

Elton Manor! Didn’t I hear madame say that she would 
lunch with friends at Sea Cliff?” 

Kathryn bent her head without looking round. 

“Then please!” Lucy touched her arm. “It w a long: 
drive. Will madame dress now?” 

“I’m not going.” The beautiful face turned from the* 
window and Lucy noticed that the filet curtain was torn 
where the restless white fingers had clung to it. “Go away- 
I want to be alone ... No, not alone. I—I want Chloe.. 
Send Chloe to me.” 

Chloe was the old negress who had been Kathryn’s nurse 
and worshiper in the childhood which now seemed so remote 
that the girl wondered vaguely if it ever had been. 

After the demise of Kathryn’s father, Chloe had been left 
in charge of the house on the Virginia estate, and there she 
had remained until a few weeks after Kathryn’s marriage 
when much to the joy of the old negress she had received a 
letter which summoned her to New York. 

“Am yo’ sho’ yo’ readin’ of dat right, Joey?” she had 
asked of the little black pickaninny who, by a slow spelling 
out of the words, had proudly read the two closely written 
pages to his black maiden aunt. 

“Sho’ Ah is readin’ of it right, Aunt Chloe. Isn’t yo’ 
knowed Ah could peruse?” 

“Lawsy! Lawsy!” the old negress had cried removing 
the bandanna kerchief from her woolly head and looking 
about the room as if wondering what she should take with 
her on this wonderful trip. 

“Bress huh heart! She ain’t fo’get her ol’ mammy. . . . 
An’ she am done been an’ got married. Law’ sakes! An’ hit 
were on’y yes’day Ah sneaked a fried cake up to de nussry. . . 
Me—what isn’t nevah rode on no train, a goin’ tuh Noo 
Yawk! Joey is Ah dreamin’?” 

Thus Chloe, with her shining black face and her gen- 
erous avoirdupois, had been Kathryn’s contribution to her 


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iSi 

husband’s already incongruous menage. And peremptorily 
Chloe had taken the reins of the place in her big puffy hands 
and the only inhabitants who did not bow to her rule were 
the master of the house, its mistress and Wan Sing, the last 
of whom refused with innocent stolidity to recognize any 
authority except that of the two beings whom he loved. 





CHAPTER XV 


“✓^HLOE, do you think my father ever felt justified 

I i in breaking a contract that he had made with some¬ 
body ?” Kathryn, lying full length on a low divan, 
raised herself on an elbow and looked at the mountainous 
black figure near the door. 

Chloe scratched her head thoughtfully. It was not for 
such as she to wonder at the strangeness of her young missie’s 
remarks or questions. Fine white folks—’specially fine 
white folks from Vaginny—had a right to be peculiah. 

“Young Marsah Lambut,” she moved her old black head 
impressively, “he nevah quit nothin no time. If he say 
somethin’ to somebody, dat somethin’ hit stays said. Yassum J* 
She spread her pudgy black fingers apart on her ample hips, 
and beamed. Then her wide face sobered. “Is yo’ alls 
sick, missie? Is dat little yellar heathen pizened yuh?” 

“Please, Chloe! Lucy tells me that you and Wan Sing 
do not get on well together. I wish you would try-” 

“Togethah! We isn’t nevah been togethah! No mam, 
we isn’t! Ah isn’t come down to ’sociatin’ wif Chinks, 
missie! Me what’s fum de best fambly of Vaginny.” Chloe 
rolled her eyes upward in indignant protest until they were 
but two round white balls. 

“But he’s a favorite of Mr. Harrington’s, Chloe.” Kath¬ 
ryn’s face had gone a shade whiter. 

“Favorite! What Ah care whose favorite he am! Eats 
dead rats! Dass what a Chink does. Eats dead rats! Ah 
isn’t want make no trouble fo’ mah missie, but if ’at triflin’ 

152 



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*53 

Chink-boy don* stay outta mah kitchen, Ah*m a gwine a 
knife him, class all!” Chloe walked back through the door 
with ponderous dignity, and at a nod from her mistress, she 
closed it behind her. 

For two bitter hours Kathryn paced the floor of her sit- 
ting room in a white heat of fury. For two hours she felt 
a wild desire to do damage to the man who was on the 
brink of a flood of exposure that would wash away the 
name which he had built up for himself. Already she could 
read the sensational headlines in the journals that would 
wage war against him—not because he was he—but because 
he stood for certain principles of which they did not approve. 

PAST OF JOHN HARRINGTON UNEARTHED f 
MEMBER OF THE YELLOW RACE! DO WE 
WANT OUR CITY RUN BY ORIENTALS? 

Kathryn closed her eyes but try as she would she could 
not shut out the haunting words. They followed her across 
the room. They perched mockingly on the backs of chairs, 
they leered at her from the long mirror in which she caught 
a fleeting reflection of her disheveled self. 

She was filled with an agony of self-pity. She yearned 
for the old carefree days when there was nothing to hurt 
her pride or to make her hang her head in shame. She hated 
the man who was indifferent to her happiness, who, to gain 
some political point, would sacrifice her. He would face 
the ugly truth of his life—expose it to the scavengers of 
publicity, even though in so doing he dragged her down to 
his own unclean level—ostracised her from the social heights 
where was her rightful home. 

She ought to do something. But what! She could make 1 
no move that would not result in a bruise for herself, and 
already she was horribly disfigured. 

She held out her two slender arms and looked at them 


*54 


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through their filmy sleeves of lace, as though she expected 
to find them finger marked and discolored. 

“It isn’t a fair game,” she said abstractedly letting her 
arms fall to her sides, “and I—I’ve already lost.” Then 
.with sudden arrogant pride, she lifted her small head high. 
She was her father’s daughter. She could suffer ignominious 
defeat—she could not break a contract. 

A muffled jangle came from the telephone instrument on 
her desk. Mechanically she went to it and sitting down in the 
little desk chair, lifted the receiver and said the customary 
"Hello!” 

“Mrs. John Harrington?” 

“Yes.” 

“Wantta give you a tip. I’m taking it for granted that 
you wouldn’t like to have your husband jugged. So I-” 

Kathryn stiffened. Her mind flew back to the morning 
after her marriage. 

“You are the same man who—who-” 

“Talked to you once before. Sure! And I just wantta 
tell you-” 

“But I don’t want to hear!” Kathryn interrupted the 
voice coldly. Nevertheless she did not remove the receiver 
from her ear, nor her eyes from the black rubber trans¬ 
mitter. 

“Rather have him jugged? All right, lady. ’S all the 
aame to me.” 

“Wait a minute!” Kathryn was speaking without con¬ 
scious volition. “What is it you—you want to tell me?” 

“Don’t fancy him in stripes, eh?” 

Kathryn shuddered. 

“Well, listen, lady. I’m going to let you in on a secret. 
Guess he ain’t told you no more’n he’s told anybody else 
liow he comes by all his dough. No? Sure he wouldn’t. 
He’d be afraid he’d lose you. But you see, missus, it’s this 
way. If somebody what knows—and they ain’t but a few 
that’s in on the business—don’t put you hep to it, you’re 





THE AUTOCRAT 


*55 

apt to be in a dirty mess one of these days, and it ain’t me 
as could stand quiet-like, and let him drag you through that 
kind of dirt.” The speaker’s voice implied that he was a 
gentleman—very much a gentleman! 

“Please! I’m not in the least interested. If you’ve really 
anything to say-” 

“Says she ain’t interested, Sing-a-Ling!” The words were 
slightly muffled. The man was speaking to someone else— 
someone who was probably standing beside him. “Says she 
ain’t interested! What d’you know about that! Says she 
ain’t-” 

“If you’ve anything to say,” Kathryn forced her lips to 
frame the words, “say it, for I shall listen but a half 
minute.” 

“ ’Twon’t take that long, lady. Just wantta tell you that 
your husband is about through importin’ opium. He— 
Wha’s that?” 

“Nothing!” Kathryn’s lips were stiff. She could speak 
no further. 

“He’s gotta big lotta the raw stuff coming over. It’s on a 
steamer that’s due to dock on Thursday. He’s put it up 
to me and a friend of mine to get it past the inspectors— 
which part of the job is a cinch—but taking care of it after 
it gets here ain’t so easy as you’d think. This friend of 
mine’ll keep it in his laundry joint. That’s his orders at 
least, from your old man, but the bulls have got wise to 
us and there’s a chance that they’ll raid the place any minute. 
You understand, my friend ain’t achin’ to get caught with 
it in his place. That’s only natural ain’t it, lady? He don’t 
dare let the boss know that he’s scared. The boss ain’t got 
a lotta patience with white-livers, and he’d probably see to 
it that my friend’s perfectly good throat would get a red 
slit in it. And to be real fair, you couldn’t blame him. 
A man that’s taking risks hisself can’t just let an accomplice 
quit him. He’s got to be rid of the bird that reneges. 
Gotta shut his trap. My friend could tell the bulls whose 




THE AUTOCRAT 


156 

stuff it is, you’re thinking? But that’d spill the beans for 
nothing, and there’d be the same chance to get that red slit 
in his throat. Nope. They’s only one way. 

“You see, the cops know that piles of the stuff—millions 
of dollars worth is getting into the country, and they been 
dying to lay hands on the guy that’s getting it here. Regular 
times my friend would house any amount—but as it is right 
now, well—take it from me, lady, he’s gettin’ the shakes. 
As I said they’s only one way to keep everybody outta 
trouble. Get the dope hid where nobody’ll be lookin’ for 
it. You see, we thought—me and my friend-” 

“Yes?” For the life of her Kathryn could not remove 
the instrument of torture from her ear. 

“We thought maybe you’d send for it and hide it 
somewhere. Right in your own house is the best place. The 
bulls ain’t suspectin’ your husband, and they won’t look 
there. And seein’ that we can’t trust the dope with nobody 
else- Wha’s that?” 

“Nothing! Nothing!” 

“If I was you, lady, I wouldn’t tell my husband nothin* 
about the business, as he’d sic his gang onto my friend, and 
they’d sure knife him . . . The stuff’ll be-” 

“Yes?” 

“It’ll be in a leather bag at Lee Fong’s laundry in Mott 
Street on Friday. I reckon, lady, you’d be wise to get it 
away from there as early as possible on that day. And don’t 
forget—you won’t be doing yourself nor my friend no good 
by piping it all off to a man what stands for no monkey 
business in-” 

There was a dull thud from the blottered desk. The 
receiver had fallen from Kathryn Harrington’s numb white 
fingers. But with mechanical precision she picked it up and 
hung it on the hook of the hissing instrument. 

A smuggler! A trafficker in opium! A despoiler of char¬ 
acter! A debaucher of souls! A waster of flesh! 

Friday! And this was Tuesday! 






THE AUTOCRAT 


i57 


She rose slowly and with great effort as does one who is 
old and worn out. A strange pain started from somewhere 
round her heart and crept insidiously up to her head. A 
peculiar tickling sensation was in her throat—an odd, sicken¬ 
ing taste in her mouth. She coughed involuntarily. A little 
stream of something red and warm came from her mouth 
and ran down her pretty breakfast gown. She leaned against 
the desk and gazed down at it curiously. Then lifting one 
hand she touched the stain speculatively. Her fingers were 
dripping and red when she held them up before her. It 
would ruin the gown and it was one of which she was very 
fond. She would ask Lucy to clean it at once—She 
would- 

The telephone was ringing again! 

She stared at the instrument stupidly. Perhaps they were 
going to come for this very breakfast robe—take it away 
from her because—because men’s souls had paid for it! 

“Yes?” she inquired as once again she put the receiver to 
her ear. 

“If it’s worth a thousand dollars to keep him outta stripes, 
you might send the thousand along, lady. In cash, you 
understand.” 

She nodded her head. Of course. She would send it. 
Was that all? 

Her lips moved but they made no sound, and it was 
evident that she did not even notice their disobedience to 
her will, for again she nodded her head, and with a little 
sigh got once more to her feet. 

The room was rocking furiously. Chairs flew past her, 
barely missing her. The walls were closing in upon her. 
.And something was at her throat—something that was chok¬ 
ing her—strangling her. 

Lucy found her a half hour later, lying face down on the 
floor, a round dark pool on the Persian rug beneath her. 

Is was on a morning several days later that Kathryn 
learned what had happened to her. She awoke very early 





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158 

with a confused sense of trouble, to find Lucy and Chloe 
bending solicitously over her. 

“Yo’ am all right, honey.” Chloe laid a wide black palm 
on the white brow where small damp curls lay like golden 
shadows. “ ’Tweren’t nothin’ but a hemridge.” 

Under the broad palm, Kathryn’s brows contracted. She 
was trying to remember just what had happened. 

“An’ dc doctah he done suffused blood so’s yo* alls 
wouldn’t die. Yo’ all right now, missie. Yo’-” 

“Blood transfusion! I—I lost a lot of—of blood and— 
and they-” 

“Yassum! Dass dess what they done! An* we alls is 
willin’ to be took fo’ de suffusion, but Mistah Ha’ington, 
he say-” 

“Mr. Harrington!” 

With a rush memory came back to Kathryn. Her hands 
caught convulsively at Chloe’s fat black arm. 

“Did he-” 

“Sho’ he did! Wha’ fo’ good am a husban’ in de holy 
bon’s uh mattermony ef he kain’t gib de blood outta his 
veins fo’ de woman-” 

A violent tremor shook the slender figure under the snowy 
sheets. 

His blood in her veins! Oh God! The horror of it! 

She lifted one of her hands and looked at it, as if she 
expected to find that already it had taken cn the hue of old 
ivory. But it was white and limp—and dead looking. 

For a long time she lay with eyes closed, her mind 
struggling painfully this way and that. Remembering that 
John Harrington had declined to give up his intention to 
run for mayor; recalling J. Gordon Junior’s words about 
gentlemen and politics; visualizing a bag of opium that was 
to be at Lee Fong’s laundry (or was it Lee Fong? China¬ 
men had such queer names); circling vaguely round a surgical 



THE AUTOCRAT 


i59 


operation in which someone’s arm had been linked to hers, 
while a strong heart gave new life to her dying one. Then 
back again through the same confusing maze. 

“Yo’ alls wants tuh see Mistah Ha’ington, honey?” 

The waxen lids lifted and startled blue eyes looked implor¬ 
ingly up at Chloe’s solicitous old face. 

“No, mammy! Not' 

“Lawsy, honey! Ah isn’t heerd yo’ call me ‘mammy’ 
sence yo’ alls was a chile!” Chloe’s black face was beaming. 
“Yo’ heerd mah missie, Lucy? Yo’ is heerd huh call me 
‘mammy’ ?” 

Lucy smiled and bent her head. 

“Perhaps,” she looked at the lovely face on the pillow, 
“madame would like me to—to express her—gratitude to 
Mr. Harrington? He is waiting just outside the door here, 
for me to tell him about madame.” 

Gratitude! For inoculating her with—with blood of the 
Orient ? Gratitude! For making her one with him! Mix¬ 
ing with the blue blood of countless generations of Lamberts, 
the vile blood of the yellow man! Gratitude! 

Her hands clenched. Her eyes blazed. 

“Tell him,” she said fiercely, lifting herself to her elbow, 
“tell him that I would have been grateful had he allowed 
me to die, but that—that,” she paused. She could not put 
the dreadful thing into words. She lay back upon the pillow 
spent and exhausted. 

‘Yes, madame?” Lucy was too well trained to display 
surprise, though mentally she commented that her beautiful 
mistress grew daily more selfish. 

“Tell him to go away,” the white hands were picking at 
each other against the bed-clothes. “I don’t want to see 
him—ever— evert' 

When Lucy opened the door leading into the corridor 
John Harrington was descending the stairs. Lucy knew 
his measured, decisive step. She wondered if he could 






i6o 


THE AUTOCRAT 


have heard. She hoped not. He might not understand her 
young mistress as did she. And he was nice. Very nice I 
She would never forget that moment when he had sat beside 
the still form of her lovely lady, one of his arms lashed to 
the marble white arm of the girl on the bed, his dark eyes 
on the proud young face that was deathlike in its stillness. 
It was all rather strange and Lucy could not help wondering. 

“Chloe!” Kathryn sat up excitedly. “What day is this? 
How long have I been here—in bed?” 

“Diss am Friday. Yo’ is been-” 

“Chloe!” It was Friday! Friday 1 Then she was not 
too late! 

“Yassum!” The great hulk of flesh bent closer above the 
bed, and the fond old eyes caught the furtive, hunted look 
in the tense, white face. “Yo’ alls wantin’ tuh tell Chloe 
somethin’ confidentual? Lucy she fixin’ of somethin’,” she 
inclined her heavy head toward the sitting-room to which 
Lucy had retreated, “an’ they isn’t nobody aroun’ but dess 
yo’ an’ me.” 

“Very confidential, Chloe!” 

“Nothin’ yo’ don’ want Ah is tuh tell nobody isn’t gwine 
git told, missie. Ah crosses mah heart!” 

“I want you to telephone to somebody for me, Chloe. I 
want a Mr. Cyril McLennon to come here at once. You’re 
to say to him-” 

“Yassum!” Chloe’s eyes widened, her thick lips dis¬ 
tended dubiously. “Yassum! Ah is tuh ’phome— Yassum!” 

It did not occur to Kathryn that her old black mammy 
had never used a telephone. As usual she was too absorbed 
in herself and her own troubles to think much about those 
who served her. And so it was that the moment after 
Lucy had been sent from the rooms, Chloe sat ponderously 
before the little desk in the sitting-room, the rubber receiver 
clutched defiantly in one of her black hands, her eyes fastened 




THE AUTOCRAT 


161 


suspiciously upon the transmitter, while to Cyril McLennoi* 
she delivered her beloved young missie’s message. 

Later on her way to the floor below, Chloe, disdaining, 
the rear stairs which were used by the other servants, caught 
a glimpse through the half open library door of John Har¬ 
rington in close conversation with a- 

“Chinamen! Huh! In mah missie’s house! Niggah, is 
yo’ seein’ things? Or is they a sho’ ’nough Chink a con- 
flabin’ wif yo’ alls’ missie’s man?” 

Wrath began to gather in her great bosom. And when 
wrath gathered there these days it vented itself upon the: 
one person in the entire establishment who would not take, 
her explosions seriously. To Wan Sing this mountain of 
black flesh with its glistening teeth, woolly hair and corru¬ 
gated neck and chin, was a never ending source of wonder 
and pleasure. Chloe and he quarreled incessantly, and Wan 
Sing loved these quarrels. They were by far the most enter* 
taining things that touched his small humdrum life. 

Chloe made for the kitchen where she remembered having 
last seen the boy. He was there. And Chloe began to 
rumble like a human Vesuvius. Wan Sing put his two 
thumbs in his ears and wiggled his fingers derisively while 
the chef and his assistant made a hurried exit. 

“Such a goin’s on Ah isn’t nevah heerd. Chinaman! 
Hump!” She rolled her eyes like something in the throes- 
of death, then she allowed them to come to rest on the 
small figure seated near the big gas range. She lifted her 
voice in an agony of anger. 

“Stop dat! Stop dat shakin’ of yo’ heathen fingahs. Stop 
hit! Fo’ de love uh goodness ef Ah doesn’t kill dat Chink 
Ah kain’t nevah be happy no mo’! Nevah no mo’ !” She 
flung out her hands wildly. “Git out uh heah, yo’ fureigner! 
Git out uh heah diss minute!” 

Wan Sing removed his fingers from his ears and said 
with rich contempt: 



162 


THE AUTOCRAT 


“You makee me slick. You not Amelican more than me. 
You Aflican!” 

Chloe sank with a bellow of impotent rage upon a chair. 
Once again John Harrington’s little pagan was the victor. 



CHAPTER XVI 


C YRIL McLENNON stepped from a rain-dripping 
taxi to John Harrington’s high carved doors, over 
which his eye ran appraisingly. 

“It’s Michael Angelo who could have been proud of 
them!” he said touching his finger to the electric button at 
his right. “And it’s the man that paid for them that can 
be proud of the lady who is wanting to see the likes of me 
on this very day.” 

“She’s expecting you.” Herbert who had opened the doors 
and taken the stranger’s card, hat and stick, was bowing 
stiffly. “You’re to come upstairs with me, please.” 

And upstairs in a heavenly room he found her, propped 
up with lacy pillows on a chaise longue, white hand extended 
limply toward him, lapis lazuli eyes dark and troubled. 

“Is it you now, Mrs. Harrington?” He was bending 
over the unresponsive hand. “And I’m only after saying 
to the mother that I thought the sun wouldn’t shine to-day.” 

“It’s a most unsatisfactory sun, Cyril, if it’s I that you 
mean.” Kathryn made a brave effort to smile. It was 
hard to play her music, use her artifices, at a time when her 
brain was reeling under its load of tragedy and her body 
shrinking from the alien thing that was coursing through it. 
But she had need, great need of this man who could be so 
easily swayed by her little tricks of enchantment, and there 
was nothing for it but to win him into doing unquestionably 
her bidding. 

“I’m as drab to-day as that weeping sky out there. Per- 
163 


164 


THE AUTOCRAT 


haps I shouldn’t have asked you to come when I’m in such 
a mood. I—I may bore you, Cyril.” 

She sighed gently and looked out at him from half-closed 
eyes, her lips drooping wistfully. 

“Bored is it you’re thinking I could be, with you to look 
at? Sure there’s nothing at the Metropolitan, not a Rem¬ 
brandt, not a Titian, not a piece of canvas or a bit of marble 
that could so vamp the eyes of me.” 

Kathryn’s conscience stirred uneasily. It was hardly fair! 
He was so clean, so sincere! Must she further enslave him 
for her own petty ends? 

But he would be happy to do things for her! Besides 
there was nothing petty about the difficulties that surrounded 
her. She was the innocent victim of the duplicity and selfish¬ 
ness of another. At what point, pray, could blame attach 
itself to her? In what was she at fault? Fate had out¬ 
raged her! Hadn’t she the right to defend herself—to use 
all her powers in an effort to save herself from further 
attack? As for Cyril McLennon- Had men less ego¬ 

tism they would be less susceptible. Could she help it if 

they were less clever than she- Was she to be blamed 

if they served her when they thought they were winning 
something for themselves? She was promising nothing— 
offering no reward . . . 

“When I received your invitation to call” (Kathryn smiled 
—he was flattering himself when he called her command an 
invitation), “I pinched myself to be sure that I was I and 
not Governor of the State, I was feeling that proud!” 

“Thank you, Cyril. Will you sit down, please?” Kath¬ 
ryn inclined her head toward a chair that had been 
thoughtfully placed at exactly the right distance and angle 
from the chaise longue to command the best view of—any¬ 
one who might occupy the chaise longue. “I—I am very 
unhappy, Cyril,” she said softly, golden head leaning back 
against a real lace pillow. 



THE AUTOCRAT 165 

“Unhappy?” The man’s heart paused in its rhythm of 
beating. 

“Very. I—I’m in such terrible trouble, Cyril. And I 
haven’t anybody to—to help me, unless you-” 

Cyril McLennon leaned forward eagerly. 

“There is nothing”—his clear voice had gone husky-- 

“I would not do to help you! You have but to command!” 

“Thank you. I felt sure that you would not—desert 
me.” The sapphire eyes lifted gratefully to the ruddy face 
from which the last vestige of merriment had vanished. 
“This thing which you can do for me”—she hesitated, “you 
must do without question. I can’t tell you how it will aid 
me, nor why it must be done. If you are normally curious, 
you may not care to do strange things which can never be 
explained to you.” 

She held out her two slender hands in a gesture that was 
both apologetic and forgiving. 

“Try me, sweet lady. I am normally curious, but I would 
spend the remainder of my life in total darkness if by so 
doing I could make you happy,” returned the man with 
grave sincerity. 

“You are very kind!” The lovely eyes veiled themselves 
with their long lashes. “The errand upon which I would 
send you is so simple, that you will wonder why I make 
such a mystery of it. Yet, believe me, my friend, it is of 
the utmost importance that the thing be accomplished with 
the greatest possible secrecy, and forgotten by you the moment 
your part in it is consummated.” 

As she spoke, Kathryn fixed her gaze on the diamond 
circlet on her left hand, and hot rebellion swept through 
her. Why had all this happened to her? Why hadn’t it 
come to Drina or to Vivian Pemberton, or to—any other 
woman of her acquaintance? It wasn’t fair that it should 
have come to her. It did not seem possible that the daughter 
of Jack Lambert could be so degraded—so maltreated by 
Fate. 





1 66 


THE AUTOCRAT 


She did not know who her husband was. She did not 
know if her name were Harrington or if it might not be 
Mrs. Wing Lung, or Mrs. Sam Ling Lee. She knew noth¬ 
ing of the history of Wan Sing. Nothing of what the boy 
was to her husband. Why had a confederate of John 
Harrington called upon her for help? Did he know so much 
about woman—about her kind of woman, that he could be 
thus confident of her cooperation? Why was his voice 
venomous when he spoke of John Harrington? Did partners 
in crime always hate and distrust each other? 

She hated John Harrington. And she hated the man who 
would accept from her a thousand dollars to “keep John 
Harrington out of stripes.” She hated them both, yet she 
was about to become their accomplice in crime. She was 
to furnish a cache for opium—to become an active member 
of a smuggling gang of which the man to whom she was 
married was the head. 

Opium! 

Visions of vice breeding dens, as she had read of them, 
rose mockingly between her and Cyril McLennon’s honest 
face. Yellow-faced outcasts leered sardonically out at her 
from foul, unclean bunks, the while a tall man with opaque 
eyes and a voice of liquid smoothness, collected his iniquitous 
gold, that he might toss more jewels at the white girl who 
had sold herself to him. 

“What is it?” Cyril McLennon sprang to his feet as a 
faint strangling gasp escaped his hostess. For a long moment 
she had been staring tensely straight into his face, but there 
was that in her dilated eyes which told him that she was 
not seeing him. The sound in her throat frightened him. 

“You are ill! I should have known it at finding you like 
this!” He stood awkwardly before her, solicitous and 
troubled. “Shall I ring for your maid ?” 

She looked up abstractedly, her fingers picking at a brace¬ 
let which Lucy had clasped upon her bandaged arm. 

Oh! it had been a wonderful bargain that she had made 


THE AUTOCRAT 


167 


for herself. Motors and jewels, and the freedom to accept, 
ay! to command the flattery of other men! No debutante 
could compete with her! She could dazzle with her splendor, 
and she knew so well how to entice! And all this power 
to rule was paid for by the sale of- 

There w T as a sharp metallic snap, and the pearl and 
emerald bracelet struck the floor at her side and rolled 
across the room. 

“I’m so sorry!” exclaimed Cyril McLennon as if he felt 
that he were in some manner to blame for the accident. He 
sprang after the bauble like a great retrieving dog, but she 
called him back. 

“I don’t want it! I—I want never to see it again.” 

Cyril McLennon stared uncomfortably down at her. 

“But, dear lady,-” 

Kathryn looked appraisingly up at him, and her lips curled 
scornfully. Her flattering men were as unsatisfying as her 
jewels. 

There was another moment of silence. McLennon sitting 
uneasily on the chair that commanded such a perfect view 
of the chaise longue, Kathryn brooding over the fact that 
terror seemed to be driving her to a point from which in¬ 
sanity was but a short step. 

A clock in an adjoining room struck eleven. The strokes 
vibrated ominously through Kathryn Harrington’s troubled 
brain. She started up from her pillows, but dizziness over¬ 
came her and once more she sank down upon them. 

It was eleven o’clock. There was no time to be lost. An 
hour or two more and—she might be the wife of a— felon . 
She had to save him—had to save herself from his mad 
recklessness, from his cool defiance of the law. Grudgingly 
she admired his daring, and because she could admire any¬ 
thing at all about the man who was dragging her down to his 
own vile level, she hated him! Hated him with a hatred 
that scorched her with its intensity. 

“Cyril,” she began, lifting her eyes appealingly and putting 




168 


THE AUTOCRAT 


into her voice a seductive note, “I want you to go to Lee 
Pong’s laundry in Mott Street, where upon identifying your¬ 
self, you will receive a leather bag. You will please bring 

it to me. No-” She paused, thinking rapidly. “No,” 

she continued, “it will not do for you to come direct to me. 
Take it with you to—the Woolworth Building. Take an 
elevator to the tenth floor. That you may be sure you are 
not followed, stand a little way back from the elevator and 
when it is about to start, rush forward and be the last person 
to get in!” Again she paused, this time to marvel at her 
-own cleverness. “On the tenth floor,” she resumed, “a little 
Chinese boy will meet you. Deliver the bag to him. He 
shall have had his instructions as to how he shall bring it 
liere to me. Is is clear, Cyril?” 

“Perfectly, my lady.” 

“You do not wish to retract your promise to—to do this 
thing for me?” 

“I shall obey your every command!” Cyril McLennon 
bowed his head gravely, but there was reflected on his honest 
face no enthusiasm for the approaching adventure. 

“Again, thank you. I would not have asked you had I 
anyone else in whom I could have so much confidence. One 
has so many acquaintances. So few friends.” 

“Your poverty is my wealth. Had you believed that an¬ 
other could be trusted as implicitly, then might I have missed 
this opportunity to serve you.” 

“You are my very dear friend!” 

“ ’Tis not much of a task at all!” protested the man. 
“ ’Tis but a wee bit o’ sport!” He rose to be off on her 
business, and at sight of the slim white hand that reached 
out to him, his lips twitched. “And will this bag be mak¬ 
ing you happy?” he asked, taking the cold little hand in 
one of his, and looking worshipfully down at the gold 
framed face. 

“It will—save me from—from greater imhappiness, 
Cyril.” 



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169 

That was scarcely enough to satisfy this Newfoundland 
of a man, but with a shy pressure of the frail fingers clasped 
close in his hand, he turned to go. He was at the door 
When she called him back. 

“Cyril!” She sat up suddenly, supporting her weight 
on a rigid arm, her eyes narrowing with rapid thinking. 
“There was to have been a—a—an exchange. A thousand 
dollars to be paid for—for the bag. I’d almost forgotten. 
I haven’t that much money on hand, and—I rather think 
Lee Fong might not accept my check. But this,” she was 
stripping a ring from one of her fingers—“this is worth twice 
the amount. Maybe—Cyril, maybe it would be better if 
—if you would dispose of this first that—that you may be 
able to pay the amount in cash.” 

Cyril McLennon stared. 

“I couldn’t do it! Not that!” 

“But, Cyril!” 

“Sure if I had the money myself I’d so gladly-” 

“But don’t you understand, my friend, that it must be as 
I say!” 

“But the ring from your wee finger!” It hurt him to 
think that his wonder lady should rob herself to pay for 
anything. 

“You have seen how little I value his jewels!” Kathryn 
emphasized the masculine pronoun, as she bent her head 
toward the corner into which had rolled the pearl and 
emerald bracelet. 

The man’s face cleared. So that was it! His wonder 
lady was unhappy in her marriage. This great John Harring¬ 
ton was not good to her. Treated her badly. Perhaps he 

dared even to- He did! Cyril was sure of it! There 

was at this very moment a bandage on the slehder wrist of 
his suffering lady! Ah! if she would but let him defend 
her! If she would but let him- 

“Your wrist?” For the life of him he could not keep the 
words from leaving his lips. 






170 


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Kathryn started and looked down at the bandaging gauze 
—mute evidence of the sacrifice which had been made for 
her last night by the man she hated—hideous testimony of 
the surgical operation that had let his blood into her veins. 
She shuddered. 

“You—you were hurt?" persisted Cyril McLennon, his 
cheeks going pale. 

“Not—severely. It—it’s really nothing. Nothing at all, 
Cyril.” Kathryn shook her tawny head. Then with an 
ostentatious patting into place of a curl that had dropped 
down across her eyes, she smiled warmly. “You’ll have to 
hurry, my cavalier. I’ve yet to arrange for the little China- 
boy to meet you.” 

“The adorable naturalness of her!” cried Cyril McLen- 
non’s heart as he made his way out into the rain. 

“Ah! the poise of the actress!” corrected his troubled 
thoughts. 

“He’ll not make the mess of it that Jimmy-boy would 
make!” His wonder lady was congratulating herself on her 
acumen. She pushed a little electric bell in the smooth 
timber of the chaise longue. “And Wan Sing! Lucy must 
find Wan Sing for me.” Her delicate brows contracted, her 
thin nostrils quivered. “Wan Sing!” she breathed bitterly. 
“John Harrington’s—Wan Sing!” Her wandering gaze 
came unwillingly to rest on her bandaged wrist, and her 
body writhed convulsively. 

That the errand upon which she had so peremptorily dis¬ 
patched an enslaved admirer, might prove to be at all danger¬ 
ous did not once occur to her. Indeed! she felt, if she thought 
about him at all, that she had been most magnanimous in 
thus allowing him to obligate her. For of course, that was 
what it really amounted to. She would have to pay him off 
with all kinds of—encouragement! She’d tea with him to¬ 
morrow at Sherry’s, and she’d wear that ravishing blue 
gown that had not yet been taken from its tissue wrappings. 

Nor did it occur to her that she was no less guilty of 


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171 

crime than were those with whom she was cooperating. Self- 
preservation was still her natural and her sharpest instinct. 
Ignominy, public disgrace, had threatened her, and she had 
averted the onslaught. Her mother before her had sacrificed 
unborn babes to her love of the hunt. It was scarcely less 
than natural that Kathryn, in her blind, mad determination 
to defy the tragedies that were reaching their tentacles 
menacingly round about her—in her desperate wish to 
ignore the fact that she had sold herself for a mess of 
pottage thereby destroying her one heritage, Pride , should 
resort to any strategy. Nor would she have believed that 
any part of the selfishness of the gay little mother who had 
ridden so recklessly, so irresponsibly through life, had 
descended to her. Despising dishonesty, she would have been 
hotly indignant had even her own well-trained conscience 
questioned her method of playing the game. 

She was up to her neck in mire, but it could not con¬ 
taminate her. Nor could the unclean, heathen blood in her 
veins defile her! Never could a Lambert be tainted. Never 
the Lambert blood polluted! If she had to fight with the 
weapons that were another’s choice, very well. Hadn’t the 
bravest of duelists accepted without demur the weapons 
chosen by their adversaries, even though those weapons were 
not to their liking? If it were a matter of one’s honor— 
didn’t the end justify the means? Thus seriously and sin¬ 
cerely would Kathryn Harrington have defended herself 
had there been need of defense. And than at this moment 
there was perhaps never less need. 


CHAPTER XVII 


I N spite of her doctor’s admonitions, Lucy’s timid warn¬ 
ings, Chloe’s honeyed entreaties, the promise of more 
rain, and her own physical weakness, Kathryn had her¬ 
self carefully dressed and assisted downstairs to the limousine, 
in time for a theater party at which she was to be the guest 
of honor. 

Once or twice during the evening her mind reverted to 
Cyril McLennon and to Wan Sing. They had served her 
nobly. The black bag with its incriminating contents was 
safe. Wan Sing had brought it straight to her, but at her 
command he had taken the loathsome thing from her sight. 
He had carried it off and hidden it in some other part of 
the house. A faint smile that was surprisingly tender, touched 
her lips as she recalled the interview in which she had asked 
Wan Sing to share in her conspiracy. She had had to use 
all her artifices—play her sweetest music. Had led the boy 
on to an easy intimacy in which he talked to her of his 
far-away home, the home of John Harrington, with its tip- 
tilted eaves, its wide courtyard softly carpeted with wind¬ 
blown blooms from a beloved plum tree, and pathed with 
smooth white pebbles between rows of larkspur; of a moss 
bound little pool in which gold fishes were but glinting 
flashes in the sun, and of humming birds that drank from the 
heart of the larkspur. 

“But, Wan Sing,” she had interrupted once, “you have 
told me you couldn’t remember the place from which 
you came!” 

“Not alone by myself.” Wan Sing looked up from his 


172 


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173 


dreams in surprise. “Mistel Hellington he tell to me like 
this. Him not tell allee same to you?” Almost there was 
astonishment in Wan Sing’s thin voice. “Him like velly 
much talk about him velly gland home. Special when him 
sometlimes sad. Someday pelhaps him go back to-” 

“No, Wan Sing! No!" She had cried out the words 
sharply and without thought, and the little face upturned to 
hers grew faintly troubled. 

“You no wan’a go?” He could not believe it. Then 
craftily: “Fline place! You be much solly, you not come 
too!” 

Getting control of herself, Kathryn feigned a change of 
mind. She even planned their trip much to the delight of 
the boy who sat on a hassock at her feet. And so the 
beautiful word pictures of John Harrington went on 
panoramically—projected through the singsong voice of 
Wan Sing to the screen of Kathryn’s vision. 

She shrank from these second-hand reminiscences. They 
\vere so many burns from a branding iron. But she had 
very great need of Wan Sing’s help and intuitively she knew 
that Wan Sing—adoring subject though he was, could not 
be drafted to service. He would have to be won to the 
point of enlisting. Too the reminiscences were acutely in¬ 
teresting. “It is good for my soul,” she told herself, “to 
permit this torture!” She would not acknowledge to her¬ 
self that she ached to ask a million questions! That in a 
subterranean part of her these borrowed memories found 
an echo, as if they had once been hers—loved and brooded 
over and exquisitely missed! An echo that was akin to home¬ 
sickness ! 

She had unwillingly admitted to herself that at least the 
pictures were beautiful, and she had asked Wan Sing to 
tell her again about the wonderful palace in the Forbidden 
City. And did Wan Sing know who “Plum-Blossom” was? 
Had his master never spoken of a Plum-Blossom lady of 
long ago? 



174 


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But Wan Sing had not known. He had never heard. 
And he had gone dreamily on with his master’s memories 
of winding streets and bare-legged coolies, of bamboo 
bordered rivers and whispering willows, and of a great 
Manchu who had died and gone to the Christian God. 

“Your master knew this Christian God, yet he allowed 
you to worship Buddha?” she had brought herself to ask. 

“Him know many Gods, Mistel Hellington! Him 
b’lieve all Gods same like one. Him say: ‘do what any 
one God teach, you be one good man, Wan Sing!’ I like 
best Buddha. Him Wan Sing can see. Wan Sing no can 
see Chlistian God. Mistel Hellington him say, velly well, 
Wan Sing can have one Buddha. Ah hy-ee! . . . Hy-ee! 
Tiy evel day now be Chlistian. Not velly like easy!” 

After awhile he had lifted to her suddenly the small face 
that was shining from recent ablutions. 

“Why you slend flo me, Mliss Hellington? Luce she say 
allee time you no wan’ me come you loom.” He was gently 
reproving, deferentially apologetic. 

“I sent for you, Wan Sing, because I want you to do 
something for me. Something very important,” she had said, 
and she had placed a caressing hand on the shining black 
head. 

And with touching eagerness the boy had conveyed to her 
his willingness to do whatever she would ask. 

Thus between Kathryn and the stage this episode of the 
morning kept rising insistently. Against the painted canvas 
settings rose word pictures of a Forbidden City that seemed 
much more real than the settings themselves, while blotting 
out the actors in which the rest of her gay party seemed so 
thoroughly interested, were a boy and a woman—the former 
of whom no doubt could have joyously pulled out by the 
root each long golden hair of the latter whenever he chanced 
to remember that she was not his master’s friend. And he 
had remembered, for the woman had seen an occasional 
shadow sweep darkly across the polished ivory of his face. 


THE AUTOCRAT 


i 75 


She knew that though he loved her no less for her ill treat¬ 
ment of him, his passionate little heart cried out in anger 
against her whenever he suspected her of having ill-treated 

his beloved master. And the woman herself- She was 

leaning forward, an elbow resting on her knee, her chin 
cupped in a pink palm, obviously conscious of the faint flush 
of excitement that was mottling her cheeks and of just how 
lovely and young she was looking, as she scorned to the death 
an unaccountable impulse to put out her two arms and 
gather to her breast the little fellow who was so torn be¬ 
tween his worship and his hate of her. 

And the woman speaking against the voices of the actors 
on the stage, told the boy what she wished him to do for 
her, while the boy listened -with a blank face. He might 
have been listening to the most threadbare account of the 
World War, so uninterested did he appear to be. Yet the 
woman knew that every word was recorded in the active 
young mind and that when she had finished should she ask 
him to do it, he would repeat each word as she had said it. 

“Then you are to bring the bag here—in a taxi,” she 
said. “Later we shall make further disposal of it. But 
just now it must be carefully hidden. Do you understand, 
Wan Sing? . . . And nobody must know, above all your 
master.” 

The boy’s eyes narrowed and he stood up. 

Against an impassioned speech of the stage hero, he was 
saying: 

“Me no tellee Mistel Hellington, me no go!” 

“But,” expostulated the woman, “you can’t tell him. He 
must know nothing about it.” 

“All time tellee Mistel Hellington evelthing,” he replied 
obstinately. 

The woman looked grieved and at once the boy softened. 

“It—it is a surprise for him, Wan Sing,” reproached the 
woman. 

For a long moment the boy gazed at her in profound 


THE AUTOCRAT 


17 6 

silence as though he were probing her soul for the truth. 
Then apparently satisfied he consented. 

“Me go do. Tellee noblody. Not noblody!** 

The woman smiled gratefully. 

“Mistel Hellington him no come home t’night. Him no 
here, him no can see.” 

The woman felt her flush recede and her face grow cold. 
She had known that the master of the house stayed over 
night often away from his home—that days at a time passed 
now, when he never came home at all. She had wondered 
-—had come to sordid conclusions and had hated him the 
more fiercely because of them. 

“Thanks, Wan Sing.” She touched his head with her 
fingers. She even thought how nice it would be to kiss the 
dark eyes set so obliquely in the small yellow face, but in¬ 
stantly she recoiled. “And, Wan Sing,” it was most diffi¬ 
cult to apologize, but she felt that it was necessary; she even 
wished to do it, “—I’m sorry that I—broke your little 
porcelain god. I’m going to buy another for you!” 

Widening eyes stared worshipfully at the woman for 
a moment, then with a deep salaam, the boy passed out from 
between Kathryn and the stage. 

In the big house on Riverside Drive a little Chinese boy 
was also reviewing the events of the day, and his pagan 
heart was disturbed. He could not be sure that he had done 
the right thing and he was sorely troubled. 

As directed Wan Sing had gone to the Woolworth Build¬ 
ing where on the tenth floor he patiently waited, looking 
neither to left nor right, his little figure rigid with excite¬ 
ment, his face placid and immobile. After a time a man 
strolled up and Wan Sing found himself immediately pos¬ 
sessed of a large leather bag. It was so heavy that it was 
with difficulty he got it to the street and finally to a taxi. 
And on the ride home his mind was busy with conjecture. 
Maybe it was the mechanism of some new toy which she 
had bought from an inventor for his master. Hy-ce! But 


THE AUTOCRAT 


177 


wouldn’t that be great! Such a surprise would make the 
master happy. For the master very dearly loved the 
factory where children’s toys were made! And Wan Sing 
remembered that his master knew how little the mistress 
liked it. 

Once Wan Sing had heard Mrs. Harrington’s aunt men¬ 
tion John Harrington’s factory, and the master’s wife had 
laughed. And it had not been a nice laugh. And at another 
time Wan Sing had heard a man to whom his mistress was 
serving tea in the big drawing-room—where Wan Sing was 
snuggling hidden and half asleep in a big chair, remark to 
Mrs. Harrington: 

“Your husband is to be congratulated, Kathryn dear. The 
greatest living maker of toys, and the husband of the greatest 
living toy!” 

Wan Sing’s mistress had risen swiftly to her feet. 

“Is that what they are calling me? His toyl’* 

“Then it is not satisfying to be a toy?” 

“I hate toys! They’re silly! I hate everything connected 
with them!” 

“Except the—toy-maker!” the man had reminded insinuat¬ 
ingly. 

It was at this precise moment that Wan Sing had become 
aware of his master’s presence. He was standing in the 
door, Wan Sing’s beloved Mr. Harrington, his calm eyes 
fixed on the two at the tea table. How long he had been 
standing there Wan Sing did not know, but as Wan Sing 
looked, he crossed the room and addressing a remark to his 
wife and her guest, he drew up another chair and sat down 
close beside them. His wife and the guest were obviously 
uncomfortable under his presence, and it was but a moment 
or two before the guest with profuse excuses took his leave. 

“Do you really hate toys?” Wan Sing’s master had asked 
when the door had closed behind the departing man. 

Wan Sing had not heard the answer. 


178 


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“But,” the man had defended quietly, “toys are the great¬ 
est creators of joy on earth.” 

There had been nothing not habitual in the master’s voice, 
yet Wan Sing, who knew him so well, sensed the pain in it, 
and his loyal heart had ached with sympathy and he had had 
a savage desire to hurt the beautiful lady who sat back in 
her chair and smiled at her husband through half-closed eyes.' 

“Don’t look at me like that!” the master was coolly re¬ 
proving. “It serves its purpose very well with other men 
—that kind of smile, but I’d rather you didn’t apply it to me. 
You see, I’m a bit different!” 

“Ah!” the lady’s lips curled scornfully, “then you—you 
acknowledge the—the difference!” 

The master of the house inclined his head, and with a 
magnificent gesture of scorn, Wan Sing’s lady had swept 
from the room, which with a sigh, John Harrington, too, had 
deserted a moment later, leaving Wan Sing sorely puzzled 
and unhappy. Just what it was all about he did not know, 
but that his master’s wife hated the toy factory which his 
master so loved—was quite enough in itself to make Wan 
Sing most miserable. 

Thus it had been that as he rode home with the mysterious 
leather bag between his feet, Wan Sing had wished hopefully 
that it had to do with toys. 

The theater party drove in its several cars to a fashionable 
roof cafe where at supper Kathryn was more than usually 
brilliant. Only J. Gordon Bradlie Junior noticed that the 
sapphire eyes were pitifully restless, and that once or twice 
her rippling laughter broke with a little gasp as though 
something in her throat had strangled it. But not even J. 
Gordon Junior guessed that she was ill almost to the point 
of delirium. 

“You’re still unhappy!” he grieved, touching one of her 
hands with a fleeting caress, and finding it cold as the ice 
in the crystal glass beside his plate. 


THE AUTOCRAT 


179 


“Mais, mon amt” her delicate brows lifted quizzically, 
“why do you say that? Is it that I am—stupid to-night?” 

“Stupid! Hear!” cried Edgar Van Kemp who was sitting 
on the other side of the table. “Was my niece ever more 
interesting than she is to-night ? . . . And she wants to know 
of Jimmy, if she’s stupid!” 

There was an instant chorus of exclamations! 

“She’s fishing! Doesn’t want the dancing girls to have 
all the applause!” 

“Stupid like a thousand volts from a sizzling wire!” 

“Much too vampish! I’m glad my husband isn’t her 
vis-a-vis!” 

“All the lure of a bad woman, and all the unresponsive¬ 
ness of a good one.” 

“Soulless enchantress!” 

“Why doesn’t Harrington take her to his factory and 
have a soul fitted into her!” 

“Of what good would that be ? Her greedy vanity would 
smother it!” 

“An inconsistent witch, who to get sympathy, scratches 
her arm and bandages it with gauze.” 

Kathryn’s small chin lifted in pretended indignation. Her 
blue eyes sweeping the long table, narrowed. Her lips parted 
in one of her insolent smiles. 

“Crabbed bunch, isn’t it, Jimmy-boy? Jealous of the big¬ 
ness of my soul, these wits, aren’t they?” she drawled. Then 
her eyes came back to the boy at her side, and under cover 
of the laughter that broke against the jazz tumult of the 
orchestra, she asked rather wistfully: “Just what is a soul, 
Jimmy?” 

The youth stared at her in silence, fiankly nonplused. 
Then he looked away from the questioning eyes, and fingered 
his napkin nervously. He wished he hadn’t seen that queer 
look in her eyes. It was such a naked, shivering thing! 
Made him want to comfort her, though why she might be 
needing to be comforted, he had not the faintest idea. 


THE AUTOCRAT 


i«o 

“A soul,” he began stumblingly, but the music bad trailed 
off into soft, far away sounds, and Edgar Van Kemp noting 
J. Gordon’s confusion took up the subject. 

“A soul is the essence of life, Kathryn!” He was lean¬ 
ing over the table toward her, his voice pitched to a key 
that would reach only her ear. “It’s the immortal part of 
man, and it is man’s duty to keep it free from contami¬ 
nation.” 

Kathryn shrank from his last word. 

“And one soul is as big as another?” she asked trying to 
be not too serious. 

Edgar Van Kemp laughed. 

“I don’t know how one would go about measuring them, 
but I do think that some of us let our souls warp, even 
rust out altogether in our selfish pursuit of physical pleasures 
*and in our indifference to the happiness of others. It has 
been said that trouble—mental anguish—sorrows that bring 
us to a realization of the griefs of humanity, enlarge the 
soul. Humility and self-sacrifice make one naturally more 
like the Divine Philosopher who gave us the Golden Rule.” 

“Mental anguish!” Kathryn’s hands clasped tightly to¬ 
gether under the edge of the table. If that were true then 
she w T ho had been so often called soulless, must surely have 
a soul in the making. Always she had hungered for some 
indescribable thing that society and money had not given 
to her. Perhaps during all these years this was what she 
had missed. A soul1 

How perfectly ridiculous! laughed her sense of self- 
sufficiency. Hungering for something? Imagination! What 
had all these people that she had not? Was there anything 
in their hearts that was not in hers? Absurd! 

“Humility and self-sacrifice!” Determinedly she laughed 
the thing to scorn. “If those are the ingredients that go 
into the making of a soul,” her gaze clashed defiantly into 
the watchful gaze of her uncle, “then I am content to re¬ 
main soulless.” 


THE AUTOCRAT 


181 

A few minutes later Van Kemp had her alone for a 
moment while they were on the street below waiting for 
their motor cars. 

“Kathie darling, is there anything wrong? Are you as— 
happy as you—might be?” 

“I’m sure I don’t know, dear, exactly what degree of 
happiness a ‘might be’ is.” She patted his arm reassuringly. 
“But a girl ought to be happy with—with everything that 
I-” 

“You mean this world’s goods! I know, darling. But 
I’d hoped that you would discover before this that riches of 
the heart are so much more satisfying than—riches of the 
earth. Harrington is a splendid man,” he commented 
apparently without relevance. “And you are physically so 
well suited to him. I—I’m wanting to know your children, 

Kathie dear, and—they-” he hesitated. She looked so 

sweetly young and flower-like as she stood there under the 
glare of the street light! It was with difficulty that he 
could bring himself to realize that she was entirely grown-up 
and had been married several months. At mention of chil¬ 
dren she had shivered and had withdrawn her hand from 
his arm. But he went on heroically, determined to save if 
he could this lovely butterfly from the sort of empty life 
her mother had lived. 

“And they—your children—they’re wanting to know you, 
darling.” 

“Don’t, please!” She looked up at him with terrified 
eyes. Her mouth was twisted and her cheeks were like 
marble. “Don’t—don’t ever say these—these dreadful things 
to me again! Please, Uncle Edgar! Pleasef* 

And before he could hazard a guess as to what could 
have caused that slim young figure to writhe so convulsively, 
before he could recall his words and realize what it was that 
she wished him never again to say to her, she had run to 
meet her approaching car, and without waiting for it to stop 
©r the man to open the door of it for her, she had snatched 




182 


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the door open herself, and springing in, had slammed it shut 
behind her. 

Huddling down on the wide cushion Kathryn fought out 
with herself a bitter fight. Reluctant always to know that 
which she did not wish to know, loath to abet anything that 
was unpleasant to her by an acknowledgment of its existence, 
fiercely determined to ignore that which might interfere with 
her wishes, she was finding it now no easy task to bend her 
arrogant will to the recognition of a fact which reason told 
her, could no longer be denied. It couldn’t be true! It 
couldn’t be true. But it was! It was! 

And complete hopelessness enveloped her. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


L UCY was waiting for her with solicitous inquiries, 
j and Kathryn laboring back over the interminable day 
and evening just past, remembered with a bitter smile 

that she had been ill last night—so ill that another's- 

‘‘I’m all right! Why shouldn’t I be!” she replied un¬ 
graciously. 

She paused in the center of the room and with a move¬ 
ment of her shoulders freed herself from her crimson velvet 
wrap. It fell about her slippered feet, where it lay like a 
pool of blood until Lucy gathered it up hastily and laid it 
across the back of a chair. 

“The lace which you wound round this nauseating band¬ 
age fooled no one. The—the thing would have been less 
conspicuous if you had let it alone!” 

Lucy might have reminded her that it was madame who 
had insisted upon the camouflage. But Lucy understood this 
aggressive, intolerant mood, and her loyal heart made excuses. 
Too, she knew how ill this restless creature was, and she 
was afraid for her. 

“Madame is tired. Will she go to bed at once, or 
shall-” 

“Tired!” Kathryn flung round tigerishly. “I could stand 
here all night! I’m not going to bed! Not for—a while at 
least.” 

“Riding for a fall, poor dear!” thought Lucy, as she re¬ 
treated to the bedroom beyond. Lucy had heard much about 
the pace at which her lady’s mother had lived—and all about 
183 




i8 4 


THE AUTOCRAT 


how she had gone to her death with her rouged lips laugh¬ 
ing I And the stories had come much to her mind of late. 

“Chasing something—that—that they never quite catch!” 
she soliloquized. “Thirsting for something they can’t find 
—these ladies who keep going like that! And my own 
sweet lady is going as hard as the mother of her ever went. 
Either she’s running after something, or away from some¬ 
thing ! I don’t know which! And at this very minute she’s 
so sick she doesn’t know what she’s doing.” 

Kathryn stood still in the center of the room and lifted 
her bare arms high over her head, her hands clenched, her 
eyes closed, her under lip caught between her teeth. 

Then the necessity for getting away from herself came 
to her, and dropping her arms to her sides, she moved 
calculatingly to the door. She would go to Wan Sing. 
Wan Sing would look at her as if she were his stained glass 

saint, and she wanted- Oh! she wanted so much to-night 

to have somebody believe that she had a— soul! Though 
really it was such driveling nonsense, when one came to 
think about it seriously—souls and all that! A soul —why of 
course, she had a soul! 

And as she went up the stairs to the third floor, she put a 
feverish hand to her throbbing temple, and wondered vaguely 
why the steps were so uneven, and why the bannister was 
unsteady 

Wan Sing was not in his room, and after a brief survey 
of the little pagan’s chamber, she switched off the lights and 
moved down the corridor. Mechanically she paused before 
the door which led she knew, to the private chambers of 
her husband. Before his marriage he had arranged for him¬ 
self other quarters adjoining the suite of rooms in prepara¬ 
tion for his bride, but he had told her of the apartment up 
here—had called it his “den of iniquity,” and had said that 
some day when she was in a mood to enjoy it, he would 
show it to her. 

Since that time 6he had not thought of it again. But 


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185 

now as she stood there and began to realize what door this 
was, the impulse to enter swept compellingly over her. He 
would be out. Wan Sing had said he would be —out all 
night. She shrank from the nauseating thought as with 
bated breath she turned the bronze knob. Then softly 
opening the door she passed over its threshold. 

She found herself in a narrow hall at the far end of which 
was another doorway hung with a heavily embroidered satin 
curtain. 

Slowly, with eyes staring straight ahead like one who is 
walking in his sleep, she approached this doorway and with 
breath fluttering uncertainly through her parted lips, her 
slender body tense, she drew aside the hanging. 

Instantly her flesh went cold. Her eyes grew large and 
dark as they fixed themselves on the figure of a man not ten 
feet away. She clutched the heavy curtain and hung to it 
for support. Her knees trembled and her limbs threatened 
to double under her weight. 

He sat on a carved ebony chair—one long sinewy hand 
resting on the ugly head of a huge, scaly brass dragon that 
reared itself from the floor at his side, the other hanging 
inertly from his knee. The red eyes of a gold dragon on 
his little finger blinked and winked in the uncertain light 
that came from candles that were flickering in bronze sconces 
against the walls. His chin was resting on his breast and 
his face was not visible. 

He was clad in purple silk pantaloons and blue silk coat. 
The pantaloons were wide and loose and the sleeves of the 
mandarin coat were extremely long. Both garments were 
elaborately embroidered in gold and silver thread. His feet 
were incased in steel ribbed slippers of crimson satin. His 
hair was the glistening black of a crow’s wing. 

Behind him stood a high screen in the panels of which 
beautifully embroidered butterflies were flirting with wonder¬ 
fully embroidered chrysanthemums against a silken back¬ 
ground of black. On a carved sandal-wood altar that jutted 


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out from the opposite wall, grinned an unbelievably ugly 
pagan god whose eyes looked with sinister steadiness at the 
man on the ebony chair. On all sides was a confusion of 
the ugly and the beautiful—the repulsive and the fascinating. 
There were rare china figures, groups of carved ivories, fine 
old bronzes, gigantic jars of blue and white porcelain, 
monstrous urns, tiny cups and saucers, rare vases of the 
Ming period decorated with hoe hoe birds in famille rose 
colorings, Manzarin blue vases of the same period, clair de 
lune vases of the K’ang-hsi, oviform famille verte palace 
jars of dense porcelain, Lang-yao ginger jars with a rich 
sang de boeuff glaze, jade and lapis lazuli, elephant tusks, 
cloth of gold tapestries, silk and velvet rugs, and bowls of 
hammered metal containing nuts, spices or dried rose petals. 
Flowers, butterflies, birds, serpents and dragons scattered 
themselves in embroidered fashion on the splotches of brilliant 
silks that covered the walls. A thin line of blue smoke 
slinked its way lazily toward the ceiling from a bronze 
incense burner. In a far corner a small Chinese boy lay 
sprawled on an orange silk rug, sleeping. 

A confusion indeed, of the grotesque, the ugly and the 
sensuously beautiful. It was a place of exquisite luxury. A 
place that invited indolence. 

The atmosphere was heavy with a riot of pungent odors. 
The smell of incense, the insinuating fragrance of spices, 
the delicate perfume of dried rose petals, the elusive scent 
of sandal-wood—smoothly commingling, filled the room with 
an odor peculiarly suggestive of carnalism. The heaviness, 
and the insinuating charm of this redolence, was intoxicating. 
Almost it stupefied with its mysterious power to make one 
dream things purely secular. 

Kathryn stood transfixed—eyes widened—delicate nostrils 
dilated—little smothered gasps stirring the silver lace at 
her breast—vaguely wondering if this were but another of 
her wretched nightmares wherein she always breathed this 
strange, compelling atmosphere. 


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187 

Her eyes were fixed on the man in the fantastic costume 
of silk and gold, who seemed absolutely incorporate with 
his surroundings, yet already they had seen and recorded on 
her bewildered brain, every article in the room. 

She had made no sound and the man’s face was turned 
away from the door, yet he knew of her presence for he rose 
with an unhurried grace that was in peculiar harmony with 
the weird things about him, and made a little welcoming 
gesture. 

“Won’t you be seated, please?” 

He turned slowly and faced her. 

“John Harrington! You!” 

To her jangling nerves she had shrieked, but in reality her 
voice was not more than a whisper—just a gasping, frightened 
whisper. 

For all that she had knowm the contour of his head—for 
all that she had recognized the strong, broad shoulders— 
had shrunk as always, from the hated dragon ring with its 
menacing, bloodshot eyes—had felt the presence of that 
familiar, magnetic personality, it was not until he faced her 
that she would permit herself to believe—to know that this 
man, in this strangely furnished chamber, dressed in the 
native costume of China, was her— husband. 

She was conscious suddenly of the ebony chair—the only 
chair in the place—which he had pushed toward her across 
the polished floor. 

“Won’t you accept my chair?” 

There was in the question his usual studied politeness and 
to hear him one might have thought this visit of hers but 
the latest of many, yet there was something else in his voice, 
something not studied—not even voluntary—a little under¬ 
current of something which might have been reproof or— 
which might have been wistfulness. And too, a mysterious 
something flitted across his face—came and was gone so 
quickly that perhaps after all it was never there. It might 
have been but the jest of a shadow, the light came so fitfully 


288 


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from the flickering candles, for he was bowing coldly before 
her and surely his face was passionless as the dried roses in 
the great bronze bowls. 

“Please do not stand.” He made a solicitous movement 
with one arm and beneath the wide gapping silken sleeve 
Kathryn caught a glimpse of a white gauze bandage. “You 
are very careless with your life. You risked it to-night to 
be with your friends. Lucy told me. But I cannot allow 
you to wantonly waste the last bit of your strength in my 
presence.” 

“I—I didn’t know you were here,” Kathryn stammered, 
still hanging for support to the heavy curtain and taking no 
heed of the proffered chair. 

“I supposed not. But now that you have found me in¬ 
considerately at home, will you not do me the honor of 
remaining? That is, if I cannot persuade you to go to your 
bed. Wan Sing will serve tea very soon and you will surely 
pour tea for me.” 

He did not add that, though she had performed this 
graceful little service for him but once before, he knew 
that she did it often for others. 

Kathryn was silent. Her dilated eyes wandered over the 
room—her delicate nostrils labored against the heavily scented 
air. 

With grave persuasion her husband pushed the chair nearer 
to her. His brilliant dark eyes were fixed inscrutably upon 
her lovely face from which the last vestige of color had re¬ 
ceded. His lips were parted and he leaned slightly forward, 
his shoulders bent and one hand grasping tightly the back of 
the ebony chair. 

At that moment, dressed as he was, with that background 
of the Orient, no one would have believed him to be a maker 
of toys, with banking offices in Wall Street. 

The attire, the skin of mellowed ivory, the enigmatic 
eyes with their slant of twelve or more degrees, the straight 
hair, the blue black of a raven’s wing, combed away from 


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189 


the high forehead, the long hands, the ease and grace of 
poise, made him entirely un-American and wholly Mongolian. 
Yet withal he looked strangely handsome as he stood there. 

“Mistel Hellington, you like him tea ?” inquired the China- 
boy rubbing his eyes sleepily, obviously not yet conscious of 
the visitor in the doorway. 

In a queer singsong voice with queer singsong words the 
man in the gold embroidered silk replied without looking 
round. The boy salaamed and quit the room by a door at 
the furthest end, which led, Kathryn supposed, to other 
chambers similar to this one. 

If only he had not spoken Chinese! Even this last proof 
had to be hurled upon her! 

Chinese! Chinese! Chinese! Oh, God! God! GOD! 
And she was his wife —she had slept in his arms! 

She closed her eyes for an instant, but immediately they 
flew open to stare wildly at the man before her. A terrify¬ 
ing thing that for the time had been almost forgotten had 
come back to her with curdling pain. 

She lifted her beautiful bare arms high over her head, as 
she had done in her own room a little while before, and 
raising her face heavenward gave a little moan of despair. 

Very gently, yet very firmly John Harrington pressed her 
down upon the ebony chair. He stood silent beside her until 
the color began to ebb back into the sweetly curved lips. 
Then he shook his head gravely and buried a long hand in 
each wide silken sleeve. 

“Sit down, please. Now that you are here, we may as 
well discuss our—manner of living.” 

“I don’t wish to discuss anything with you. I am-” 

“If you don’t care to talk with me, you will listen to 
me.” 

Again his voice was smoothly polite, but there was some¬ 
thing in the dark eyes gazing so steadily into hers, that was 
coldly compelling. 

“On the morning after our marriage,” began the voice 



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190 

that was silken as a poppy petal, “when you had made it 
plain to me that you could not live with me as my wife, I 
mentally paid you the compliment of blaming your timidity. 
I thought you were frightened—ashamed, and I loved you 
the more for it.” The man rested one of his long hands 
on the grimacing head of the huge brass dragon and looked 
thoughtfully down at it for a second, then his somber eyes 
lifted and once again Kathryn found herself unable to tear 
her gaze from his. 

“I have come to see my mistake.” His lips twisted into a 
mirthless smile. “You had not married me . You had 
married my earthly possessions.” Again he stopped speak¬ 
ing, and turning from her he began to move slowly round 
the room quite as if he were entirely alone. 

Kathryn wondered dully why she did not slip quietly 
away now that she was free from those strange, mesmeric 
eyes. She was vaguely surprised at her quiescence as she 
watched him with reluctant admiration. The raven-black 
hair had the sheen of satin in the flickering light. The 
gold dragon embroidered on the back of his mandarin coat 
writhed glisteningly as he walked. Once he paused be¬ 
side a great bronze bowl and catching up a handful of 
dried rose petals, let them sift slowly through his fingers. 
Again he stopped for the space of a long breath close be¬ 
hind her, and without glancing round, she knew that he 
was looking at her, that his lips were pressed tight and that 
the muscles of his lean cheeks were tense. Once more he 
moved. There was a faint rasp of silk as his stiffly em¬ 
broidered coat touched a panel of the high black screen, and 
then he was standing straight and still before the fat, grin¬ 
ning bronze god, his saturnine face a clean ivory against the 
gray of incense smoke, his lips moving as though offering an 
incantation. 

His voice burst suddenly through the silence, and Kath¬ 
ryn started nervously. 

“It has not been an easy task for me to unveil my love 


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191 

—to see her as she really is. It has not been pleasant to 
have to acknowledge to myself that I have been cheated. 
In making the bargain you were not actually cleverer than 
I. You were only less honest.” He swung round sharply 
and his eyes catching hers were fiercely accusing. “You are 
without thought or consideration for anybody else. To gain 
a pleasure or to avoid a pain, you would sacrifice those who 
love you best!” 

Kathryn stood up electrically. 

“You beast!” Her face was white, but even as she 
trembled with indignation, there rose before her the ardent 
face of a young Irishman and the salaaming figure of 
a little Chinaboy—both of whom she had selfishly used 
that she might be saved from something unpleasant. There 
came to her the sudden vindicating thought that considera¬ 
tion for this accusing man had urged the use of those two. 
But the thought soothing though it should have been, was 
umvelcome. It stained her cheeks a dull red. Women might 
do such things for men they loved—might jeopardize them¬ 
selves and others—but she did not love John Harrington. 
She loathed him, and were she not his wife he might for 
all of her, smuggle opium into the country by the ton! 
As for the creatures whose lives the drug ruined—she was 
sorry for them of course, but—surely she should not be 
blamed if- 

“Nobody has ever spoken to you so—honestly?” he 
queried almost sympathetically, while across his shoulder the 
grotesque god leered sardonically. 

“Nobody has ever spoken to me so insultingly!” she 
flung back scathingly, and instantly there flashed into her 
storming mind another scene and another man, and a boyish 
voice was crying out to her that she was a selfish she-cat! 

“Honest speech is often insulting to the person it indicts. 
Flattery has not exactly spoiled you, Kathryn, it has merely 
dwarfed you—kept you from growing into the fine thing 
God meant you to be!” 



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192 

She wanted to drawl sneeringly: “Which God? Yours 
or mine?” but fear that he might ask her as sneeringly if 
she really had a God drove the words back from her quiver¬ 
ing lips. 

“You have no right to say these things to me!” she de¬ 
fended desperately, wishing passionately that he would look 
away. She could not think clearly when he looked at her. 
There was something viciously disconcerting in the level 
gaze that so steadily held hers. It was like a scalpel pushing 
through and through her. She felt the cut of it in every 
fiber of her being. 

“I have the right of ownership!” Into the oblique, prob¬ 
ing black eyes came a faint glimmer of sarcasm that was 
immediately erased by something else. Something which 
Kathryn could not interpret though it angered her even more 
than did the sarcasm. Dully she realized that the expression¬ 
less had become expressive. 

“Then,” she cried breathlessly, “you really think that you 
—that I-” 

“That you sold yourself to me?” He was polite now 
though scarcely apologetic. He made a deprecating gesture 
and the dragon on his finger winked at her gleefully. “Why 
not? I was the highest bidder. Though frankly, I should 
not have made the purchase, had you explained to me the 
conditions covering your side of the bargain. I think you 
did make a faint effort at being honest, that day in the 
chop house, when I told you that I wanted you. I think 
you tried to tell me that for a proper consideration you 
would be an ornament in my home—but that-” 

“Oh!” Kathryn put her hands to her eyes. “I can’t— 
stand it!” 

“Nor can I, Kathryn! I am not made of wood, nor of 
steel. I’m a man with burning blood in my veins, and 

you are-” he hesitated the fraction of a second while 

his thin nostrils contracted with a sharp intake of breath, “a 
maddeningly desirable woman.” 



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i93 


Kathryn shivered, rebelling in the same moment, against 
the contradictory warmth that spread swiftly through her. 
She dropped her hands from her eyes and looked at him 
calmly. At least these were words that she could under¬ 
stand and with which she could cope. They were words 
to which her ears had long been attuned. Poise returned to 
her at sound of them. 

Eve was flattered by a serpent. A queen has been gratified 
by the adulation of a chimneysweep. Vanity is not aesthetic. 
Its appetite is gross. It is apt to accept with equal relish 
offerings from the throne and the gutter. It has been said 
that a beautiful woman condemned to die, paused on the 
step of the guillotine to return the admiring smile of the 
headsman, her fear of death suddenly lost in the warm 
embrace of egotism. 

Of their own volition Kathryn’s eyelids lowered until they 
half veiled her eyes, and without conscious intention she 
smiled alluringly. 

“What,” she asked—and mechanically her voice took on 
a note of appealing softness, “are you going to do about 
it?” 

She was avenged. The eyes meeting hers were not now 
opaque and unreadable. They were glowing flames. The 
ivory face was shadowed by a swift rush of blood. Veins 
swelled and throbbed on the backs of the supple hands that 
were clenching and unclenching at his sides. 

“I am going to have you—the real you. All of you! All 
of you!” 

“Indeed!” Her smile challenged despite her sense of 
danger. 

“You must have a price!” His voice was no longer 
smoothly liquid, it was flat and breathless. “Whatever it is 
I will pay it! The heart from my body—my life if you ask 
it!” 

Kathryn shook her head tauntingly, the smile still on her 


194 


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lips, her eyes still seductively veiled. She was frightened, 
but also she was a little intoxicated. 

“It is impossible . . . Your ancestors-” 

“My history!” He leaned toward her, his head coming 
so close to hers that she could see the hammering of the 
pulses in his temples, and the faint graying of the inky hair 

just above them. “I had sworn to keep that secret until-” 

his thin lips compressed for an instant, “until I was sure 
that you loved me. But if that is your price-” 

“Stop!” Kathryn shrank nearer to the wall. His history! 
He would give her its sordid details! He would sell it to 

her. He would tell her- No! No! Not that! She 

didn’t want to hear it. 

“I—I want to go to my room.” 

“Not to-night! To-night you will stay with me!” 

His voice was husky and the look in his eyes burned and 
defiled her. She moved backward toward the door, her 
breath stilled in her throat, her heart pounding furiously. 
But his powerful arms reached out and drew her to him— 
tight against his breast. There was an inarticulate sound 
in his throat as forcing back her head, he bent his face close 
to hers, then—with a savage movement he put her from 
him, and as she leaned back limply against the wall, he 
retreated a step, and stood looking at her with surprising 
calm. 

“I am sorry to have been so easily handled.” It was as 
if he were apologizing to himself. “You can be glad that 
I accepted only a part of your invitation. You good women 
who challenge the bad in men, play at a dangerous game. 
The wonder is that you do not oftener lose.” 

Kathryn moved her lips but sound would not issue from 
them, and still hot upon them was the touch of those other 
lips that were now condemning her. The floor beneath her 
feet was revolving, and his voice came to her from a great 
distance. 





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T9S 


n You are chastely immoral. Viciously virtuous 1” His 
eyes held hers mercilessly. 

There was a hideous silence in which Kathryn wanted to 
shriek and to beat the wall behind her with her two violently 
trembling hands. But she could not move. She could make 
no sound. Then again his voice came to her across great 
muffling spaces. I 

“Is your vanity so insatiable that it cannot be satisfied with 1 
what you have already done to me?” A shadow slid darkly 
across his face, and Kathryn vaguely conscious of it, felt that 
some sighing thing had scuttled breathlessly past her. “Once: 
—before our marriage—your lips responded to mine, and 
missing the soul of you, I felt that at least you had the: 
ordinary instincts with which nature has endowed the 
lowliest of animals. But in that too, you are lacking. 
Marble is as passionless as it is soulless.” He paused. His 
eyes once more impassive, released hers and turned slowly to 
the altar on which the grotesque god still grinned sardonically. 
“I am not reproaching you. It is not your fault if you are 
not complete—if in the great scheme of things, you were 
meant to be no more than a damnably beautiful shell. But 
I cannot help regretting that your vanity—has stirred up a 
debacle out of which we must both come scarred.” 

The revolving floor came slowly to a stop. The dark 
slant eyes that had so completely filled the room came back 
to their normal size. Youth asserting itself, stilled the 
trembling of the svelt silver-clad figure that leaned against 
the satin hung wall, and brought back to a clear focus the 
mind that had been stumbling in confusion. 

Harrington’s words had cut sharply through Kathryn’s 
chaos to her keenly receptive subconsciousness, and they had 
left her oddly agitated. She was neither angry nor con¬ 
trite. She was bruised and sore and vaguely curious. She 
had been short-circuited. During the miserable weeks just 
past, the insulation within which she had always lived, had 1 



196 


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become worn and ragged though still capable of protecting 
her to a degree. Now suddenly it had been torn entirely 
away, and she stood stripped before her many tragedies— 
naked before herself! 


CHAPTER XIX 


“XT THAT you have just said-—” she moved her head 

\\ to and fro slowly. “I—I don’t resent it. I— 
don’t know if—if I believe it . . . I don’t 
know. I—I can’t think!” She drew her delicate brows to¬ 
gether in a little frown of puzzlement. She seemed not to 
be able to understand the fact that his words had not in¬ 
furiated her. 

“You’re ill. I’m a brute to have treated you so badly!” 
Harrington stepped to her solicitously, his crimson satin 
slippers coming close to her small silver ones. “I’m sorry. 
Will you permit me to ring for Lucy? Or will you allow 
me to take you to your room?” 

Kathryn looked at him wonderingly. The gold figures on 
the wide sleeves of his long silk coat appeared to fascinate 
her. 

“I think I’d like to—to go alone.” There was nothing 
of her customary imperiousness in either her voice or her 
manner, and her wide eyes looked as if they were seeing a 
ghost. 

“I can’t let you go down those stairs like—this. You— 
you’re half fainting. I’ll help you if you-” 

Kathryn looked up to see why he did not go on, then her 
eyes followed his, and a little gasp escaped her. 

The heavy portierre had been drawn back and there 
standing in the doorway were two grim looking men the 
taller of whom was holding back one side of his coat, and 
indicating with a stubby forefinger a glistening star that 

197 



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198 

was pinned to the coat’s dark lining. Behind the two 
.strangers stood Herbert white and apologetic. 

“I’m sorry, Mr. Harrington. They insisted upon seeing 
you,” the butler was saying. “And they wouldn’t allow me 
to announce them. Made me bring them straight here.” 

“Tell them to go away!” Kathryn caught convulsively 
at Harrington’s arm. “Tell them to go away!” The 
significance of that glistening star drove her frantic. Horror 
enveloped her. 

Strong smooth fingers closed over hers reassuringly, and 
looking back again at her husband’s face, Kathryn was faintly 
conscious of a feeling of admiration for him. He appeared 
to be not in the least disturbed. The muscles in his lean 
cheeks looked a little taut, but his eyes were unwavering. 
He was staring inquiringly at the men. 

The tall thick-necked man on the threshold who had been 
displaying his star, dropped his hand and allowed the edges 
of his coat to fall together as he took a step forward into 
the room. 

“We’ve been sent to-” he hesitated. It was not easy 

to say what he wanted to say, with John Harrington’s cold 
eyes holding his. “We—Burns and me—was sent to— 

The man in the costume of a mandarin of China, would 
not help him by the slightest question, by the briefest flash 
of anger. His silence was amazingly disconcerting. 

“We have—uh—you see, Mr. Harrington, the chief re¬ 
ceived a tip on the ’phone this morning that you were getting 
Into the country a pile of the dream stuff. Well, the chief 
was on the job in a second. An’ you couldda knocked him 
over with a boiled pea when Kelly—the man that he put 
on the case, reports that the stuff had come to your house, sure 
enough. We—Burns and me—well, you couldda knocked 
os over the same way, when the chief called us in, and give 

us the ear full, and then sent us here to-” the thick 

jred throat cleared itself noisily. In all his experience there 




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199 

had never been anything so hard to buck up against as the 
terrible silence of this great John Harrington whose eyes 
would not leave his. 

“Go away! How dare you come here like this?” It 
was Kathryn who spoke, Kathryn whose face displayed fright 
and indignation. “Show them out, Herbert.” Once more 
she was imperious, though whitely, tremblingly so. 

“Oh, I would, madame, if they’d go. But they won’t!” 

“You’re right we won’t. Not till we’ve done what we 
came to do,” grumbled the other stranger, thrusting forward 
a bulging coat pocket in which was hidden one of his hands. 
“But you’d better,” he transferred the black butt of a cigar 
from one corner of his mouth to the other without the aid 
of either hand, “get the lady outta the joint.” 

“Will you go, Mrs. Harrington?” Herbert stepped into 
the room and approached Kathryn. 

“Certainly not.” She was supercilious now. “These dread¬ 
ful creatures shall not-” 

“She will go with you, Herbert. I don’t wish her to 
remain here.” John Harrington spoke without moving his 
eyes from the face of the thick-necked man. 

“And I do not wish to go.” Kathryn flung his hand 
from her arm, and slid with the sly, swift grace of a panther 
toward the ebony chair, upon which she sank, nerves tingling,, 
heart hammering with fright and expectancy. 

The thick-necked man shrugged his shoulders. His part¬ 
ner embarrassedly rubbed the little button of a nose that 
was set in the middle of his fat face, and surreptitiously 
discarded his cigar. Herbert accepting as his dismissal the 
curt nod which Harrington directed toward him, went 
dazedly from the room. While John Harrington without 
so much as a glance at Kathryn, folded his long arms and 
frowned slightly. 

“Is this a practical joke? If it is, I warn you, I have 
no sense of humor for it.” 


200 


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“I’m sorry it isn’t just that, sir. We’ve a warrant for 
the—the searching of your house.” 

“You’ve a—warrant-” 

“Yes, sir.” Both strangers looked ashamed and apologetic 
as one of them held a document toward Harrington. “It 
isn’t our fault, sir. And there ain’t no doubt but that the 
chief’s mistaken. It ain’t the likes of possible that it’s you 
as could be playing such a double game.” 

“Why,” blurted in the other man, “I was only after say¬ 
ing to my partner here, that you’d done more to wipe out 
the dope trade than any hundred men in the country put 
together. I says to him, I says: ’tain’t reasonable to suppose 
that’-” 

“You are wasting time. Will you proceed with the busi¬ 
ness that brought you here?” John Harrington bowed his 
dark head gracefully and stepped significantly to one side. 

Kathryn sprang excitedly to her feet. 

“You—are going to permit this insult—this infamous 
thing?” 

The man in the embroidered silk garments gazed down at 
her with calm slant eyes in which some strange unreadable 
thing was smouldering. 

“There is no way out of it. You saw the warrant.” He 
looked from her troubled face to the slim white hand that 
had tremblingly caught at his arm, but he did not touch 
the hand, nor did he look again at her face. He turned his 
gaze to the two men who were going rather timidly about 
their task. 

“Please don’t worry,” he said to her evenly. “I have 
nothing to conceal; let them search. You would better go 
now. It is not nice that you should be subjected to this sort 
of thing.” 

Kathryn wanted to shriek with wild laughter at that. 
He was considerate of her. Oh, very! What pray, had 
she not been subjected to, since the day after her marriage 
to him! Another shock or two could not kill her since she 



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201 


had lived through all the others. They would find the bag 
with its dreadful contents, of course. But what could they 
do about it, after all? She hadn’t a doubt but that this 
man to whom it belonged would be cunning enough to get 
out of the affair. There would be no exposure. He was too 
clever to permit that. Besides, these two men—these officers 
who appeared to stand in such awe of him—they could be 
easily handled. She had heard that the one weapon, which 
could defeat the law, was money. John Harrington would 
buy his way out of the mess. To-morrow she would awaken 
to find the whole matter ready to be forgotten, or at least 
safely filed away in her wretched mind with its relative 
nightmares. She dropped once more into the carved ebony 
chair and glanced from her husband, standing near the door, 
tall, graceful and distinguished looking, to the two men who 
were moving curiously though intently around the room. 
Of course he could manage them! 

“Perhaps you’d rather start—your business in another part 
of the house?” Harrington was plainly trying to make 
things less embarrassing for them. 

Both men turned and looked at him, and the face of the 
man called Burns, took on a deeper shade of red. 

“Our instructions, you see, was to begin the search in 
whatever room we found you-” 

“Thus giving me no chance to thwart the purpose of 
your mission. I understand.” Harrington laughed dryly. 
“Proceed then. My wife is not well, and she insists on 
remaining until you have finished.” 

The thick-necked man removed his hat, looked furtively 
at Harrington, then back at the hat which he held in his 
wide, square hands. He began to twirl the hat and to 
fumble at it. 

“The chief sent his apologies,” he muttered awkwardly, 
“and said to tell you that he almost resigned his office when 
the evidence got to him that made it necessary to give your 
house the once over. He said that under the circumstances, 


202 


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seeing that it was really your fight, it was ridiculous to 
suppose that the very thing you was fighting could be hidden 
in your own house. Said he wouldn’t believe it possible that 
you was a Jekyll-Hyde sort of guy. And that it was a gross 
insult to you, for anybody to even have the thought. But 
he said he guessed you was the last man on earth who would 
expect him to neglect his duty.” 

Harrington looked at the speaker steadily. The soft hat 
fell from the fumbling, square hands. The man wished 
uneasily, that he would say something. But Harrington con¬ 
tinued to gaze at him in silence. 

“You see, the chief he said-” 

Harrington’s lips parted in a faint smile. He was stand¬ 
ing now close beside Kathryn’s chair, his right shoulder 
leaning against the silk-covered wall behind him, his left 
arm stretched carelessly along the top edge of the brilliantly 
embroidered screen, his silk-clad figure gracefully at ease, 
his dark eyes noncomittally bent upon the interlopers, his 
smooth, strong face passionless. 

“He said-” began the man again, moistening his lips 

arid twisting his retrieved hat—“he said that-” 

“I accept your chief’s apologies,” Harrington interrupted 
suddenly, “for myself. For my wife—this insult to her— 
we shall see later what is to be done about that. You will 
oblige me by talking less and working faster at your chief’s 
duty" 

Kathryn felt a little thrill at the unruffled dignity of the 
man beside her, but almost at once the thrill left her and 
she shrank down in her seat with wide, fascinated eyes as 
the two men began to move swiftly round the room; lifting 
the silken pillows that were strewn promiscuously about; 
pulling back tapestries and embroidered silk panels and 
pounding inquiringly on the walls beneath; kicking up the 
corners of rugs as though looking for trap doors; reaching 
impertinent hands into the recesses of deep bronze vases and 
porcelain bowls. 



THE AUTOCRAT 


203 


They were indiscriminate. Thorough. Nothing escaped 
the eyes nor the fingers of them. They were indefatigable. 

Kathryn crouched lower and lower on her chair. Her 
body seemed to sink into a pitiful little heap crowned by a 
blaze of gold above an ashen face. Her hands clutched at 
the folds of her silver lace gown. Her eyes burned and 
glowed like living coals of fire. Her heart pumped like a 
motor driven to a dangerous speed, yet it seemed unable to 
force the warm blood to the cold surface of her quivering 
flesh. She watched the men with terrified concentration, 
her nerves taut, her brain spinning round like a small boy’s 
top. 

There was something she ought to do. What was it? 
Why couldn’t she think? It was within her power to save 
the situation. She felt this dully, stupidly. But what was it 
she should do? Ruse? Strategy? Where were her wits? 
Her much talked-of cleverness? Why was she sitting here 
passive? It was like having a nightmare in which some 
fiendish thing was approaching her with awful menace, and 
she was finding to her dismay that her limbs refused to 
move, to obey her command. 

She looked round at the man near her side, and though 
he did not return her look, he was conscious of her move¬ 
ment and he reached out his hand and touched her with a 
comforting pressure of his fingers. 

A terrifying silence filled the room. The pungent, in¬ 
sinuating odors of the spices, the dried rose petals, the sandal 
wood, the incense, and the hundred other aromatic things; 
combined with the brilliant splashes of silks and satins, the 
glint of rich embroideries, the jades, the porcelains, the ivories, 
the bronzes, and the god grinning down upon a tall, lithe 
figure in purple silk pantaloons and gold encrusted coat, made 
the two strangers seem entirely out of harmony with the place, 
quite incongruous in their rough serviceable street garments, 
and their business-like inquisitiveness. 

The whole thing was unreal, a dream scene of gorgeous 


204 


THE AUTOCRAT 


beauty through which a pair of ghouls were prowling! Kath¬ 
ryn was just assuring herself that the whole thing was a 
fabric of her own imagination, when an ejaculation at her 
side startled her. 

“That little box! Its contents cannot interest you. If 
you will please to not-” 

The red-faced man looked apologetically at Harrington 
across the iridescent surface of a small mother-of-pearl box. 

“Sorry. But it’s my orders to search thorough.” 

Looking up Kathryn saw the muscles tightening in her 
husband’s lean cheeks, and wonderingly she returned her 
gaze to the red-faced man. He was working at the mother- 
of-pearl lid, his chin thrust out, his upper lip caught by the 
teeth of his undershot jaw. She felt the tense rigidity of 
the man standing erect beside her chair, and she was con¬ 
scious of his slight shrug as the lid flew back and something 
fluttered to the floor. 

“You see,” Harrington commented suavely, “your reward 
is your trouble.” 

He stepped forward and held out his hand for the thing 
which the man had hastily picked up. 

“You understand, sir, it hadda be done!” The man 
dropped a dried, pressed flower into the smooth, up-turned 
palm. 

John Harrington smiled rather grimly and with the flower 
and the mother-of-pearl box, came back to the carved ebony 
chair, from which Kathryn was watching him intently. 

“What is it ?” she asked curiously, extending her own hand 
palm upward. 

“The ghost of what was once a—red geranium!” 

Kathryn started. He had made no movement toward 
her outstretched hand, nor had he bent his head to look at 
her. 

“From the rectory of—of the Little Church Around The 
Corner?” she asked softly, letting her hand fall back to 


THE AUTOCRAT 


205 

the polished arm of her chair where it lay like an exquisite 
plaster cast against the black of ebony. 

“From a beautiful dream that turned out to be a jest,” 
he replied a little sadly, as he placed the flower back again 
in its iridescent casket. 

Kathryn’s slender fingers gripped the carved wood be¬ 
neath them. Insolence beginning to brew within her sent 
a stinging retort to her lips, but something happened at 
that instant to abort it. 

Kicking back a pile of magnificent rugs that had made a 
careless, extravagant heap of color in one of the far corners 
of the room, the thick-necked man had uncovered—a black 
leather traveling bag! 

“Well, I’m damned!” The words exploded from the 
man’s heavy, protruding lips, and reverberated through the 
room, their shrapnel of amazement splintering into every 
nerve between the four walls, their concussion momentarily 
paralyzing every brain. 

There followed a taut, brief silence, the silence of a battle¬ 
field on which only the dead remain. Then a smooth silken 
voice evidenced the recovery of at least one of the shocked. 

“It is rather damning! Providing, of course, that it con¬ 
tains what you—expect it to contain!” 

John Harrington had not moved, and his cool nonchalance, 
his undisturbed poise, his graceful acceptance of the situation 
were baffling. The men staring back at him came out of 
their bewilderment with a feeling of uncertainty. He was a 
strange man, this John Harrington. And a clever man. Too 
clever for those who dared oppose him! And the chief had 
said- 

“It is all a dreadful mistake!” Kathryn getting somehow 
to her feet, stood swaying between her chair and the 
monstrous brass dragon that reared itself from the floor at 
her right. “You will not open it, please. I—I wish you 
not to open it.” Her face was colorless as chalk. Her eyes 
were wide and dark. There was something ghastly about 



ao6 


THE AUTOCRAT 


even the ice-like shimmer of her silver-clad figure. A slim, 
lifeless-looking hand clutched at the slender stalk of her 
throat. Strands of her red-gold hair fell in wanton waves 
about her alabaster forehead like windblown flames against 
the white wax of a candle. 

“We can’t stop them, Kathryn,” Harrington soothed, and 
his long fingers closed gently on one of her trembling arms. 

“You will examine your find, officers. My wife-” he 

hesitated slightly over the word, “is ill, but since she will not 
go from the room, the business in hand had best be dis¬ 
patched with all possible speed.” 

The two men at the other end of the room glanced 
awkwardly down at the bag which lay between them, then 
the thick-necked man dropped to one knee and began to 
tug at the small brass lock. 

“You can’t do it! I tell you you can’t do it!” Kathryn 
cried desperately, flinging herself across the room and tear¬ 
ing with her two hands at the man on the floor. “Don’t 
you understand? I—I don’t want you to—to open it.” 
She said the words as one whose wishes had but to be voiced 
to be considered, obeyed. 

But Kathryn’s wishes had never before collided with those 
of the law. And as the man, grumbling an embarrassed 
explanation for his action, continued to pick at the little 
brass lock, she drifted backwards toward her chair in in¬ 
credulous amazement, her hands stretched out gropingly be¬ 
hind her, her pallid lips moving mutely. 

The room was whirling round and round again just as 
it had in that other moment when she had been accused of 
having no soul. And somebody who was whispering her 
name and begging her to be calm, was helping her into her 
chair. A man in queer gold embroidered garments was 
trying to hypnotize her. He was stroking her hands, her 
bare arms, and at each movement of his fingers the glitter¬ 
ing eyes of a dragon drew and held her gaze. 

The caressing fingers stopped suddenly with a painful 


THE AUTOCRAT 


20f 


grip of her wrist, and somewhere—away off somewhere— 
voices were ejaculating, and there was a long low whistle. 

“It’s the goods! Enough cans of it to feed all the dopes 
in the city-” 

“And in his house! Can you beat it?” 

“Better get the chief on the wire-” 

“Yeh! And we gotta find that Chink kid that was trailed 
here with the stuff.” 

“Well, it’s a big day for us, Burns. It’s a clean up. With 
that young Irishman in the cooler, the goods located-” 

“And the master mind caught red-handed- Well, I 

guess it’s a day!” 

“Sorry, Mr. Harrington, but it ain’t our fault! Yuh 
understand-” 

With that young Irishman in the cooler! Young Irish¬ 
man in the cooler! Cooler! What was a coolerf Surely 
they couldn’t mean—jail! Cyril McLennon in jail! Cyril 
McLennon- 

“John!” Unconsciously Kathryn turned to the man at 
her side. Unconsciously she spoke his name. “John! I—I 
Cyril McLennon - ” 

Harrington moved a little and looked down at her, his- 
dark head sharply silhouetted against the flaming orange 
satin of the wall behind him, his thin straight lips parted,, 
his eyes narrowed until they were but slits of black in his 
ivory face. 

“You are not well, Kathryn,” he said, in an uninflected 
voice. He seemed to be searching her face, cutting through 
her bewilderment with those sharp slant instruments of his- 
Emotionless and calm, as a surgeon operating a difficult 
case, he said to her as he might have instructed an assistants 
“You must not talk.” 

“But I—Oh, you don’t understand —Cyril McLen~ 
non -■" 

“I asked you not to talk,” he repeated evenly, and some¬ 
thing in those narrow black slits that slanted so slightly 



THE AUTOCRAT 


208 

toward his temples, translated his words for her. She tried 
to smile understanding^, but her lips were stiff and un¬ 
responsive. 

“—and a course, Lee Fong’ll get outta it by sayin* that 
he didn’t know what was in the bag.” Again the strangers’ 
voices came back to the two near the door. 

“Like h-1 he will! He’ll make himself solid by pip¬ 

ing for the state. And now for that Chink kid!” 

John Harrington had turned his gaze from Kathryn’s 
white face to the mother-of-pearl casket which he had placed 
on the wide shelf that served as an altar for the grinning 
god, the faintest furrow between his straight black brows. 
But now as he turned his dark head and gazed with cool 
composure at the speakers, there came to his lips from some 
remote recess of his being, a faint reflection of a smile. 

“If you have no objections,” he interrupted, once more 
stretching his arm along the top of the silk and sandal wood 
screen, “I shall summon Wan Sing, the little Pekinese who 
lives with me. I should rather, if you don’t mind,” he 
was acknowledging their command of the situation, “that 
you didn’t go in search of him. He’s a little chap and 
you’d probably frighten him. Here with me—well, no 
matter what you do to him, he—he’ll feel more comfortable.” 

The men looked at each other, conferred for a moment 
in whispers, then Burns, the man with the red face and 
button nose, nodded his heavy head slowly. 

“Can’t see that it’ll do any harm. The main thing is-” 

“Thank you!” Harrington made a graceful bow, the 
mockery of which was quite lost upon the two men, who 
despite themselves were fascinated by him, and turning 
toward a small door that led off in the opposite direction 
from the satin-hung passageway, he clapped his hands to¬ 
gether sharply. 

Almost at once the door was flung noiselessly open and 
Wan Sing came quietly, emotionlessly, into the room, on his 
small face not a visible sign of surprise at the scene which 




THE AUTOCRAT 


309 


met his eyes. As If they two were alone he came close to his 
beloved master and stood at attention, like the brave little 
soldier that he was, looking neither to the right nor to the 
left, and with but the faintest tremor about the childish 
mouth. 

“Wan Sing,” John Harrington placed his two hands on 
the boy’s thin, undeveloped shoulders, “these men are officers 
of the law.” The boy turned slowly about and made a low 
obeisance, turning back again immediately to the man whose 
hands were waiting for his shoulders. “And they have some 
questions to ask you. You can answer them or not—though 
I think—I believe, that your answers cannot possibly in¬ 
criminate you, still you have the privilege of remaining silent 
at—this particular time. This is merely-” 

“Sure! He don’t haftta answer nothing now, if he don’t 

wantta. But maybe-” the thick-necked man was once 

more twisting his hat. He colored uncomfortably. There 
was something not just —regular about those three at the 
other end of the room, something that made him feel that 
it was Burns and he who were the guilty ones. Harrington 
was a prince of a man—everybody knew that. And his 
wife was so beautiful that the swiftest glance at her made 
him want to throw up his job rather than hurt her. Then 
there was this little Chink kid! Damned if that youngster 
didn’t make something hurt in his throat! And yet—here 
at his feet—in this queer room, with New York’s man of 
mystery dressed for all the world like a Chink emperor, or 
king, or whatever it is Chinks have—was a bag of opium. 

“Yes?” inquired Harrington. “You were going to 
say-” 

The thick-necked man cleared his great throat. 

“I was going to say that maybe he’d wantta help us to 
—to get at the real parties in this matter. Maybe if he’d 
talk, we’d have a chance to round up the—the rest of the 
gang before they have time to make their get-away.” 





210 


THE AUTOCRAT 


“Do you hear, Wan Sing? They want your help. Re¬ 
member that truth has less to fear than—untruth.” 

Wan Sing bowed his small head with the swiftest flutter 
of a glance toward the lovely huddle of silver in the big 
ebony chair. 

Kathryn moistened her lips and made as if to rise, but a 
gesture of a wide silken sleeve caused her to sink back again 
into her place. 

For a tense interval there was silence. 

With unblinking eyes the boy gazed steadily up into the 
inscrutable face of the man whose gripping fingers weae 
almost snapping the frail bones of his shoulders. 

“Wan Sing,” Harrington spoke very slowly and very 
distinctly, “did you ever see that bag before?” He bent 
his handsome head toward the cowhide bag above which 
towered the pair from police headquarters. 

Wan Sing did not look. His eyes never for an instant 
left the face that was smiling at him encouragingly from 
above a mandarin coat of rich blue silk. 

“Why like know?” 

“Because, Wan Sing, these men say that you brought the 
bag to this house. At least, a boy, a little Chinese boy, 
carrying that bag was trailed to this place.” 

Wan Sing tucked his tongue in one satin-smooth cheek 
and from the corner of his eye inspected the lovely lady who 
having sent him for that very bag—for Wan Sing had no 
need to look, since upon entering the room without appear¬ 
ing to notice anything, he had missed nothing, not even the 
smallest detail of disorder of this dear sanctuary—was now 
doing nothing, saying nothing to help him. The lovely 
lady’s blue eyes were wide and frightened and they caught 
at his covert gaze imploringly. 

Wan Sing sighed softly. He was sorely troubled. Some¬ 
thing was wrong. The bag which had promised to be of 
such great value to his beloved master was come to be some 
sort of menace. The master who was always so gentle, 


THE AUTOCRAT 


211 


was hurting him with his clutching fingers. And the beauti¬ 
ful lady to whom he, Wan Sing, had given his solemn 
promise of secrecy was silent at this moment when he wished 
her so very much to give him permission to speak. He 
wanted passionately to tell the truth. Never had he lied 
to his very great man. Never before had he been without 
answer to his master’s questions. 

Like a little stoic he stood there, with four pairs of eyes 
boring into him. And though with superb nonchalance he 
shrugged his two imprisoned shoulders, and with magnificent 
craftiness tilted his head in innnocent inquiry, he was achingly 
miserable. 

“Wan Sing see lotta blags. How can Wan Sing know 
how many time he see same blag?” 

No older and more experienced strategist could have better 
played for time. But the men from headquarters were 
accustomed to strategy. They were quick to recognize 
evasion. 

“Will you look at me, please?” It was Burns who spoke, 
and instantly John Harrington’s hands dropped from the 
boy’s shoulders. 

“Do as he says, Wan Sing.” 

Wan Sing’s small slight figure turned slowly round, and 
again Wan Sing’s emotionless eyes sought those of his lovely 
lady. 

Kathryn moved her lips. She tried to speak but she could 
make no sound. Besides—what was there she could say? 
Surely the thing would be straightened out some way. John 
Harrington was a powerful man. It wasn’t possible that he 
could fail in ridding himself of these men. It was all such a 
wretched mess! Her head was aching, and her pulses were 
throbbing. It wasn’t fair that she should be dragged through 
this foul mire. She ought to help Wan Sing—she ought to 
say something—explain his part in the business—relieve him 
from real guilt. But even her owm conscience should not 
expect her to incriminate herself. She was sorry for Wan 


212 


THE AUTOCRAT 


Sing. Fearfully sorry! But he would get out of it all 
right. They couldn’t punish a boy of* his tender years! It 
would be absurd! Unreasonable! and she’d always heard 
that law was reasonable. Nevertheless, she was sorry for 
him. . . . But what could she do? 

She twisted her mobile hands together in her lap, refusing 
to recognize the fact that she was sacrificing the boy; 
struggling against the inconsiderate desire to save him at 
any cost to herself; fiercely battling against a merciless sense 
of guilt that was threatening to suffocate her. But these 
denied emotions were reflected in the blue eyes that begged 
so pitifully for forgiveness in that brief moment when Wan 
Sing’s gaze touched hers. 

Again the boy sighed softly. Then he lifted his face 
inquiringly to Burns. 

‘‘Ever see this bag before, my boy?” 

Kathryn’s slim silver-clad figure stiffened as though brac¬ 
ing itself against a blow. John Harrington leaned a little 
against her chair. 

“Pelhaps.” 

“Don’t you know?” insisted the thick-necked man. 

Wan Sing thrust a hand into the gapping end of each 
sleeve of his nankeen jacket, and smiled meaninglessly. 

“Pelhaps.” 

Burns muttered something under his breath. He kicked 
t the bag with the square toe of his heavy boot. 

“Might as well help us. We’ve got the big Irishman 
locked up. If you’ll help us, maybe you won’t have to go 
away with us. You wouldn’t like to sleep in a cell, would 
you?” 

“Oh, please! Pleasel” Kathryn was on her feet. Her 
lips were white and convulsed, her body was trembling 
visibly, her shimmering hair was in disorder where her rest¬ 
less hands had torn at it. “I can’t let you—do this thing 
to him. I—I-” she moistened her lips and made a move¬ 
ment toward the staring men. “I—I—I-” 


THE AUTOCRAT 


213 


She left off saying I finally, and held out her two hands 
mutely. The gesture meant nothing to the onlookers. To 
Kathryn it was reason deprecating emotion. She had stopped 
herself in time. Saved herself by a breath. She sank down 
upon the confused heap of brilliant rugs defeated in her 
victory, bewildered, broken, wretched. 

“Mliss Hellington!” Standing there before his inquisitors, 
his hands buried in his sleeves, his small face sphinx-like, 
Wan Sing called her name softly. “No be solly. Wan 
Sing be allee light blime by.” 

Kathryn smiled wanly, abjectly. Dear, gallant little Wan 
Sing! She would make up to him for this. Some way she 
would repay him. She wanted terribly to look across at 
the silent man of whose measuring scrutiny she was painfully 
aware. But she dared not meet that steady gaze. She was 
afraid of the things its very opacity would say to her. She 
knew that he had scaled her wall of ostentatious importance 
and that he had looked down into her vacuity as into an 
empty well. He had stripped her and had stood her up 
naked before the mirror of her own conscience. 

“Someblody tell me-” Wan Sing was saying, his face 

turned now toward Burns—“someblody tell me get blag 

and-” he paused and his eyes came unreproachfully back 

to Kathryn. 

“Yes?” The word dropped from John Harrington softly, 
but it went clattering through the room like a hail stone. 

“And bling it-” again the boy’s thin voice wavered 

to a stop. 

“Here!” urged Burns a little sharply. 

Wan Sing nodded. 

“Who was it told you to do this thing?” demanded the 
other detective excitedly. 

Kathryn held her breath. If he spoke—if he spoke her 
name—what would they do with her, these men who—who 
talked of Cyril McLennon as though he were a criminalf 
And if he didn’t speak—what would they do with him— 





214 


THE AUTOCRAT 


with poor little Wan Sing? And why didn’t John Harring¬ 
ton shoulder his own guilt ? It was his guilt! And yet- 

What was it these men had said about this being his fight? 
What had they meant when they told him that their chief 
had said it was ridiculous to suppose that the very thing he 
was fighting could be in his own house I And they had 
mentioned Lee Fong—they had said- 

“Answer the question, Wan Sing,” persuaded John 
Harrington fixing his attention upon the woman whose gaze 
as it held Wan Sing’s was so frankly imploring. “Look at 
me, Wan Sing,” he said gravely, “and tell me-” 

“Please!” Kathryn gasped. “Wan Sing did only what 
■—what-” 

“Mrs. Harrington,” the ivory face was still turned to 
hers, “you will refrain, please, from making any comments. 
We must not allow our lady to mix in our troubles, must 
we, Wan Sing?” 

Two slant eyes met two slant eyes, and a pair of small 
shoulders stiffened bravely. 

“Women not stlong like men,” said Wan Sing with a 
shadow of fine contempt for the benefit of the two strangers 
who had threatened him with a cell. “Me? Wan Sing 
not aflaid. Blime by-” 

“But the person who told you to bring this bag here,” 
persisted Burns. “Who was he?” 

The boy stared for a long silent moment at his questioner, 
the muscles in his throat moving spasmodically, his face ex¬ 
pressionless. To the four waiting for him to speak, this 
breathless silence was a pregnant thing, as tangible as a 
theater curtain that promises to lift on the second act of a 
tragedy. 





CHAPTER XX 


C ANDLES sputtered in their sconces. Wooden articles 
about the room creaked like living things. Curtains 
fluttered at the open windows and waved themselves 
buoyantly into the room like mysterious signals. The huge 
scaly, brass dragon glared viciously across at the pagan god 
and the god grinned back complacently. A breath of air 
escaped from under the billowing curtains and rushed gustily 
into the room, catching up as it came a handful of dried 
rose petals from a bronze bowl and scattering them raspingly 
among the tense occupants of the room. A hideous little 
spider crawled out of its hiding place and perching itself on 
the end of a great ivory elephant tusk mused at the tragedies 
of men. The wind-disturbed hangings of the walls set 
embroidered butterflies on the wing and serpents to wriggling 
toward the group in the center of the room. 

The air was electric. Even John Harrington’s imper¬ 
turbability was not impervious to the straining intensity of 
the moment. There were no signs of its effect in his passion¬ 
less face but his head was bent forward—his eyes were 
fixed upon the boy’s mouth as if he would shape the words 
it was to speak. 

Only Wan Sing seemed to be undisturbed, yet perhaps 
it was Wan Sing’s heart that really beat fastest and Wan 
Sing’s soul that most shriveled under the electric currents. 

A metal star glistened where a coat hung loose, and that 
cold hard glitter crucified Wan Sing’s courage, but still he 
appeared unabashed; he could even chuckle. 

The lovely face cameoed against the extravagant color- 
215 


THE AUTOCRAT 


1216 

[ings of the room, haunted the boy. This woman who was so 
inuch like his stained glass saint had intentionally or unin¬ 
tentionally betrayed his master. If he should learn that 
she had meant to betray—ah! (he sucked in his breath with 
swift heroic decision) then he, Wan Sing, must kill her. 
The thought left his throat unaccountably swollen and tight. 
At least he would not tell these men that she was the traitor. 
He did not mind— much —what they did with him, but he 
could not bear that they should touch her. She was his saint 
.—she had kissed him (and Wan Sing felt the spot between 
his oblique brows burn reminiscently), and—she was HIS 
wife. He could not allow these men to hurt her. He could 
not allow that. Later he would know if she had meant to 
harm HIM, and if she had, then he, Wan Sing, would 
avenge the wrong. Never did his people permit, if they 
could help it, strange, unfriendly hands to pacify their 
angered gods. It would be very difficult, perhaps—and Wan 
Sing swallowed hard—but it was not for such as he to 
hesitate. 

His gaze came round to the square uncompromising toe 
of a heavy street shoe, where it held for a second. Then 
lifting slowly with a flickering pause at the glistening metal 
star, it came to a square chin, then a stubbled upper lip, and 
finally to a pair of piercing, inquisitive eyes. 

“If I no tell-” he swallowed again convulsively—“you 

-—you take me away? Maybe me not to come back to- 
mollow? Maybe not next day? Maybe—not no time?” 

The silence broken, there was a swish of movements and 
a clearing of throats. 

“If you don’t tell them, Wan Sing,” John Harrington 
remarked a little hurriedly, “you will remain here in this 
house, and I shall arrange to have you talk to-morrow morn¬ 
ing with their chief.” 

“But he—he could be tampered with. You could tell 
him-” 

“What to say?” John Harrington laughed mirthlessly. 



THE AUTOCRAT 217 

“But one of you will stay here with the boy. I’m sure that 
can be arranged.” 

Again Wan Sing’s eyes met Kathryn’s and with all her 
heart Kathryn tried to deliver to him a mute message of 
gratitude. Gallant little Wan Sing! He had not told. He 
had spared her. Loyal little pagan! She felt a sudden, 
stinging shame for her unjust attitude toward the boy dur¬ 
ing the months just past. She had been hard, cruel. So 
often she had repelled him, and as often he had come back 
worshiping. Yet a moment ago this boy, whose pagan god’s 
image she had wantonly destroyed, had faced the jaws of the 
law, sacrificed and alone, and he had uttered no word that 
would implicate her. 

“ . . . Le Fong!” 

The name burst without warning through her conscious¬ 
ness. Instantly she was alert. 

“Yeh-” Burns was adding something to his partner’s 

words—“and before morning they’ll have Slippery Charley 
in the sweat-box! And after three or four hours with no 
dope, he’ll be eating outta the chief’s hands, ready to make a 

clean breast of it for just one round little pill. Maybe-” 

he stopped short. “By God! I wonder if the chief’s thought 
about whatta certain motive might drive a man like Slippery 
Charley to do!” He swung round sharply. “Mr. Harring¬ 
ton!” he demanded excitedly, “didn’t your men get the evi¬ 
dence that sent Slippery up the river, a year and a half ago? 
And didn’t Slippery swear to-” 

“Whatever either Slippery Charley or I did a year and a 
half ago has no immediate bearing on this matter. If your 
duties here are finished, will you kindly report to your chief? 
There is a telephone in the next room. Wan Sing will show 
you. By the time you have made your report, I shall 
be ready to go with you to headquarters. I’ve only to get out 
of these,” he indicated his embroidered garments, “and into 
street things. And, Mrs. Harrington,” he turned his hand- 





.2l8 


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some head slightly, though his eyes did not meet Kathryn’s, 
*‘you will retire to your own rooms, please.” 

Mechanically, Kathryn got to her feet and for an instant 
she stood before him, staring at him with frightened eyes— 
i then she was at the door leaning weakly against its lintel. 
And a few minutes later, though she had made no conscious 
effort to get there, she was on the floor below at the door 
of her own boudoir. 

“Madame!” Lucy was helping her across the threshold, 
**you look as if you had seen a ghost.” 

“I have!” Kathryn whispered. “I’m a ghost myself, 
Lucy. I—I’ve just been burned at the stake.” 

“Oh!” Lucy shuddered. “Poor dear!” she murmured, as 
she tucked her beloved lady into a soft deep chair. “She’s 
completely lost herself! And the doctor said-” 

“No, Lucy,” contradicted Kathryn with a wan smile, “I 
think—I am —finding myself.” She caught one of Lucy’s 
needle-pricked hands between her two satin-smooth ones, and 
looking up into the girl’s face with an expression that was 
alternately defiant and wistful, she said simply: “I’ve seen 
myself, Lucy. Seen myself as I really am with all my 
pretty wrappings torn off. But I don’t like being naked, 
Lucy.” Her mouth twisted as though she were going to 
cry. “I’d rather be a chrysalis, an insensible thing in my 
cocoon of egotism, than—than to be a—a maudlin penitent.” 
t “Of course, madame,” Lucy agreed, perplexedly. “Will 
madame go to bed now?” A little embarrassed, she had 
loosed her hands and had dropped to one knee at Kathryn’s 
feet. “Madame must be very tired.” She touched one of 
the small silver slippers tentatvely. 

“And I won’t be a maudlin penitent! Do you hear, Lucy? 
I’ve just as much of a soul as—as anybody, and if—if I 
haven’t, I am quite all right as I am.” 

“Madame is very beautiful!” Lucy’s hands fell together 
in her daintily aproned lap as she sank wearily to a sitting 



THE AUTOCRAT 


219 

posture beside the shining slippers that impatiently declined 
to be touched. 

“Beautiful! You see! Even you! You can’t say a 
single nice thing about me except that I am— beautiful. You( 
hate me. You flatter me because you are paid to do it. 
Others flatter me because it makes me easy to get on with- 
And always I’ve taken that flattery to mean—to mean— 
what I wanted it to mean. I haven’t wanted to love, but I’ve; 
wanted to be loved, and now suddenly I discover that 
I’ve never been loved and—and I suppose it’s because I—I’ve 
never loved. I can’t inspire anything fine because there’s 
nothing fine in me. I’ve never been very considerate of 
others, but I’ve bullied others into being considerate of me. 
Well,” she leaned forward until her string of pearls hung; 
close to Lucy’s staring face, “I’m not complaining. I’m 
satisfied to be what I am and to live for myself alone.’* 

She thrust out one of her slippered feet, and watched for 
an instant the fumbling of Lucy’s trembling fingers as they* 
worked at the tiny brilliant buckles, then she repeated 
petulantly: “I’m content to be—what I am, you under¬ 
stand. I won’t be preached to and I won’t be criticised . . . 
Law is a dreadful thing, isn’t it? One is justified in—ins 
avoiding its clutch. Don’t you think one is, Lucy?” 

Lucy drew off the long silk stockings and slipped a pair 
of pink satin mules on to the slim bare feet, then she got 
slowly up from the floor. 

“One is never justified, ma’am, in cheating,” she replied* 
flushing uncomfortably at her own temerity as she loosed the 
low bodice of silver lace and began to remove the amber pin* 
from the tumbled mass of red gold hair. It was a new 
and disquieting experience, this being deferred to by her 
mistress. 

“Cheating!” Kathryn’s delicate brows drew together. 
“Whatever else I am, at least I’m not a cheat. If I have 
evaded an issue-” Suddenly she caught her under lip 


220 


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with her teeth and her eyes, staring straight ahead of her, 
dilated. 

Why that was just what she had done! Cheated! And 
always she’d prided herself on her habit of playing fair. 
Cheating had been to her the most despicable of all vices. 
Even as a child she had rather disciplined herself on this 
point of playing fair. And now she had come to—to the 
degraded depths of- 

“But of course you are not a cheat! Why should madame 
be a cheat? It is absurd . . . See! Even a dried little rose 
petal loves you and is clinging here to your hair.” 

A dried rose petal! Wafted from his great bronze bowl 
by a wanton breeze and dropped into the mesh of her hair! 

She held out her hand. 

“Give it me ... I wonder,” she mused half aloud as it 
touched her pink palm, “why it was there, and—where it 
grew. Perhaps it knew a Plum-Blossom who lived long ago, 
*—a Plum-Blossom who lived and loved where bamboo leaves 

whisper in the night wind! I wonder-” Her voice trailed 

off into silence, but her thought went on uninterrupted. 

Perhaps this little petal had been one of those that had 
sifted through the fingers of the man in the costume of a 
mandarin, who had stood but an hour ago, beside a great 
bronze bowl in a strange, heavily-scented room, toying with 
dried rose leaves and scourging an arrogant woman who with 
reluctant admiration was watching him. 

Came memory of a pressed spray of geranium blossom, 
and a faint smile flashed into her pensive face. But instantly 
it was gone, like a small light switched off as suddenly as it 
had been switched on. 

What was happening to him? If it were true that he 
was a most active foe of that vicious drug, why had he never 
talked to her about it? . . . Oh, yes! Of course. He’d 
had no chance! They’d had so little social intercourse. 
She’d taken so little interest in his affairs. But—if he was 
not a confederate of the man who had called her on 


THE AUTOCRAT 


221 


the telephone, who then was that man? Was he ‘Slippery 
Charley’? . . . And Lee Fong! The police had arrested 
Lee Fong! And they had arrested Cyril McLennon! 
Cyril locked up! Something had got to be done! She 
couldn’t go to bed with Cyril McLennon in a cell. Did 
cells have beds? she wondered. Wretched, hard, unclean 
things, no doubt. And Cyril’s mother! She had such soft 
fluttery fingers, and such a dear grahny way with her. Was 
she alone to-night ? Or had Drina learned about Cyril’s arrest 
and gone over to the McLennon place? Drina hadn’t been 
going there a lot of late. Had Drina and Cyril broken off 
their affair? She hadn’t been very decent to Drina. Culti¬ 
vated her and studied her as a biologist examines a strange 
bird. So too, had she cultivated and studied Cyril McLen¬ 
non. But she had not dropped Cyril McLennon. She had 
not tired of him. Was it because Drina was of her own 
sex that her interest had flagged? And had she encouraged 
Cyril in his frank devotion? 

If he no longer loved Drina- Oh, there was no use 

denying it! She’d interfered in their destiny! She’d touched 
them with the virus of her vanity. She’d brought havoc 
where peace had been. 

And Wan Sing! Her heart contracted at thought of 
him. He too, had fallen under her evil spell. Moral leper 
that she was, she’d made a cheat of a child who worshiped 
two gods. And Wan Sing had smiled courageously and had 
spared her. Was an officer of the law guarding the boy at 
this moment? Where were they? In that room she had 
•just left? Or were they perhaps, in that plain little chamber 
which earlier that night she had found unoccupied ? Couldn’t 
she buy the man off? Or would he arrest her for trying 
to bribe him? She shuddered. It was such a maze! She 
kept running this way and that, but there seemed to be no 
door, no way out. She was tired and her head hurt. If 
only she could awaken to find it a wretched dream! Per¬ 
haps after all- 



222 


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“ . . . and then I can prepare madame for bed?” 

She started, became conscious of Lucy and of the string 
of pearls that were dripping like tears from Lucy’s fingers. 

“What is it? I—didn’t hear.” 

“I’ll put madame’s jewels away and then, if madame is 
ready, I’ll-” 

“But I’m not ready, Lucy. There’s no use my going to 
bed. I sha’n’t sleep. I think I shall never sleep again.” 
She stood up and let the loosed silver gown slip down to 
the floor where it lay in shimmering folds about her feet. 

“I’m afraid my cloud is silver on the outside,” she said 
looking down at the dress rather ruefully, “and that its 
lining is black, a lusterless, awful black!” She stepped out 
of the pile of metal laces and stood, slim and straight, in her 
gauzy under-things before her wondering maid. “It’s I 
who have been cheated,” she went on veering back to her 
habit of self-defense. “I was created for beautiful things.” 
She was growing more resentful, more surely convinced. 
“Beautiful things like this chiffon negligee.” She slid her 
bare, exquisitely molded arms into the cascade sleeves of 
an imported confection which Lucy was holding up for her. 
“And this frothy piece of loveliness is made up of veneers 
just as I am. There’s a layer of lavender upon which is a 
layer of delicate blue, and over that is a film of sea-shell 
pink. The effect is good, but there’s no substance—no real 
fabric—it’s just layer upon layer of chiffon. And that,” she 
turned and looked at Lucy as though she expected, de¬ 
manded even, a contradiction to her words, “is an exact 
description of me. Layer upon layer of the sheerest, the 
most expensive and the best designed ancestors have made of 
me a creation that would delight an artist. But I’ve no 
substance. I don’t wear. And—I’m easily crushed.” She 
waited for Lucy to snap the chiffon garment together at 
one shrugging shoulder, then she slipped her feet more 
securely into the little pink mules and crossed to the low 
chaise longue . When she had settled her graceful, thinly 


THE AUTOCRAT 


223 


clad body into a comfortable position among the lingerie 
pillows that heaped the couch, she inspected Lucy moodily. 

The girl was stooping to pick up a long silvery-gray silk 
stocking, and Kathryn noticed that when she straightened 
she did it slowly as one who has lost her resilience. It came 
to her suddenly that Lucy was no longer young and that 
though she was but a year or two older than herself, and 
had come to her in earliest youth, she had grown old in 
her, Kathryn’s, service, while she, Kathryn, was still young. 
She looked at least thirty-five, yet Kathryn knew her to be 
in her middle twenties ... A cold band tightened around 
her heart, and a sudden moisture fogged her eyes. 

Poor old Lucy! She’d had a bad time of it. With what 
infinite patience had she always accepted her, Kathryn’s, 
arrogance and petulance! And how little she had concerned 
herself about this woman who dressed her, combed her hair 
and garnished her for conquest. She’d actually been cruel 
at times. There was that day a year or two back when 
Lucy had been carried off to a hospital with a fever. She’d 
sent flowers—tons of flowers. But she hadn’t gone to see 
her; she’d been too busy pursuing pleasure and looking about 
for the rich bachelor who might become a generous husband. 
And that time at Palm Beach when Lucy had told her shyly 
that a very nice young chauffeur from New York had 
invited her to spend an afternoon at one of the less fashion¬ 
able beaches with him! She’d been rather magnanimous 
about it. Had urged Lucy to accept the invitation and had 
planned impulsively to play that she was maid and Lucy 
mistress, arranging to dress Lucy on that gala afternoon. 
But when the day came she had discovered, very little to her 
dismay, that this was the day of a certain yacht race in which 
she was much interested, and—Lucy had not met her young 
man. 

“Lucy,” she brushed a tear bead from her lashes and lifted 
herself to an elbow, “I’ve treated you shamefully. I’ve been 
terribly-” 


224 


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“Madame!” cried Lucy, turning in astonishment from the 
wall safe wherein she had deposited a wide leather jewel box. 
“You’ve been wonderful to me. You’ve paid me two salaries 
instead of one, and you’ve been generous in other ways. 
.Why you’ve-” 

“Money!” Kathryn’s face grew a little hard. “That 
doesn’t bring happiness. And I’m afraid you’ve not been 
happy.” 

“But I have, ma’am. I-” 

“And your chauffeur of Palm Beach?” 

Lucy flushed warmly. 

“I’m seeing him occasionally.” 

“Then I didn’t ruin the—the affair.” 

“Has madame forgotten that one day last month she let 
me have one of her cars for a whole day in the country?” 
“Ah!” 

“I went to see his mother. She’s very nice, ma’am. And 
—I—we talked about you. She thought you must be a kind 
mistress to give me the day and a car for my trip. She 
said-” 

“I think I shall like to be alone, please. Don’t wait up 
longer. I shall get myself to bed if I feel at all like going 
to sleep.” The moisture had gone from the deep blue eyes, 
and the golden head had dropped down among the lacy 
pillows with an air of dismissal. 

“Dear, perverse lady,” Lucy said to herself as she went 
from the room. “Dear, proud lady whose left hand refuses 
to see what her right hand does.” 


CHAPTER XXI 


K ATHRYN’S slim chiffon-clouded body lay motionless 
among the tiny white pillows. Her thoughts were 
rampant, rearing, leaping, crouching. Battling with¬ 
out restraint. She was in utter sympathy with her sense of 
ill-treatment, yet she resented the egotism which encouraged 
that sympathy. She was torn by an agony of apprehension, 
at the same time she was, strangely enough, aloof, queerly 
detached and callously indifferent. 

Once or twice she moved her head, and the two long 
braids of sunlit hair writhed undulatingly down over her 
shoulders and across her thinly veiled breast. And once she 
lifted a tightly closed hand, and opening her fingers shook 
from her pink palm a fine brown powder. For a second a 
faint rose perfume slid through the air, and the shadow of 
a frown gathered beneath the soft ring-like curls that nestled 
against the white of her forehead. 

She imagined she could hear the rasping of her nerves, 
and there was a deafening noise in her head, a hammering, 
a rhythmic hammering, that would not stop. She sat up 
suddenly and looked at her desk clock a few feet away. It 
was after four. Nearly morning. She glanced fearfully 
round the room. How weird everything looked at this hour! 
And how still it was—except for the noise in her head and 
the rasping of her nerves! Why didn’t the telephone ring? 
The fiendish monster that had connected her with this whole 
sickening mess! Why didn’t it release her? It had sent 
her to walk in a labyrinth of horror. Why didn’t it ring 
225 


226 


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now and direct her to an exit where she could find clean, 
pure air? 

She drew her layers of delicately tinted chiffons closer 
about her and sank back again upon her pillows. There 
was a stinging sensation in her eyes, and her lips felt hot 
and dry. Filled with warring emotions, she tried desper¬ 
ately to focus her attention upon the Kathryn whom she 
had kept so carefully veiled even from her own admiring 
self. Why hadn’t she known her, realized her before? Why 
had she to be so brutally introduced—so savagely stripped? 

She had never denied that she was a mercenarian. Had 
never tried to varnish the truth about her feeling of 
superiority over those less beautiful, less well-born than 
herself. Who then, was this Kathryn, whose beauty had 
seemed up there under the satirical grin of a pagan god, to 
be so wickedly devastating? And why should she be blamed 
for possessing the character that was born to her? 

She put her two hands to her eyes as if to shut out the 
picture that kept projecting itself against the screen of 
her imagination . . . Suddenly a revulsion of feeling shot 
through her, and at once she was warmed with a rush of 
self-pity. Her hands dropped limply to her sides while tears 
gathered in a fine mist on the long lashes of her fluttering 
eyelids. 

She had wanted tinsel and she had won it with her 
seductive laughter and her alluring eyes. And now, the 
tinsel was hers, and—her laughter was frozen, her eyes were 
tear wet. Life had promised to be so beautiful, and she 
was finding it a twisted caricature. And why should she 
not have wanted tinsel ? Loved the beautiful ? Didn’t other 
women- 

The argument remained unfinished. 

A door had opened and—had softly closed! There was 
a faint muffled sound as of cautiously moving feet on the 
rug that sprawled at the head of the chaise longue. Some¬ 
body had come into the room and had paused there just 


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227 


outside her range of vision! A suffocating oppressiveness 
held her breathless through a long tense moment. Then out 
of the awful stillness came a voice —his voice. 

“I hadn’t expected to find you up. It is to your credit 
that you are not asleep and enjoying in dreams the newest 
dances with the latest victim of your charms.” 

Kathryn sat up immediately, whitely indignant. 

“You have no right to come here.” 

“I’ve not only the right to come here—I’ve the right to 
stay here. But I’m not wanting to stay. Thank God! 
I’ve no desire to touch you, to breathe the same air with 
you.” He had come round the end of the chaise longue, 
and he stood now an arm’s length away, his eyes bent fiercely 
upon her. 

Kathryn shrank back, a little scared, instinctively draw¬ 
ing together the chiffon drapes that had come unfastened at 
her delicately rounded breast. 

“You—have come to—to say things to me-” She 

moistened her lips breathlessly. “You’re going to accuse 


John Harrington looked down at her, not without certain 
compassion. She did look so altogether lovely, so ravishingly 
desirable. He brought his white teeth together sharply, and 
his strong, supple hands clenched at his sides. 

“I’m going to tell you what your foolish pride, your fear 
of notoriety, did for you.” 

“Then you are going to be—nasty,” Kathryn drawled 
with a pretense of calm as, arranging the soft clinging folds 
of her negligee about her slender limbs, she swung her feet 
languidly from the couch to the floor. “Oh,” she murmured 
as one of the gay little pink mules fell from a foot not yet 
perfectly adjusted. 

John Harrington stooped and picked it up. 

“Absurdly small,” he said, holding it rather gingerly in 
his long colorless hand and staring down at it soberly. “It 




228 THE AUTOCRAT 

might have been made for a Chinese woman whose foot was 
bound in infancy.” 

Kathryn made a little throaty, gasping sound, but he went 
on without heeding it. 

“It is provokingly insouciant, with its flippant little rose¬ 
buds. And-” he lifted it to his face, “and its breath 

is—the perfume of you.” 

He loathed himself for having spoken the words, and the 
muscles in his lean face hardened with the grinding together 
of his teeth. Would he never get the fire of this sorceress 
out of his veins? Would memory of the touch of her be 
with him forever? She hated him—had married him for 
nothing else than money. She had refused to live with him. 
And to-night he had been telling himself that he no longer 
wanted her—that he loathed her with a loathing only a 
degree less than that which she felt for him. He had come 
here to her room to tell her that—and directly he had looked 
upon the slim body of her, swathed in a diaphanous some¬ 
thing that concealed no slightest curve of the flesh that he 
knew to be silken-smooth and delicately pink—he was blind 
with want of her. And immediately she had lifted those 
scornful blue eyes to his, her wantonness had been forgotten. 
No man was safe within reach of her witchery. No man— 
not even one who had long ago learned and mastered the art 
of self-control. 

“May I replace it?” he asked stiffly, dropping to one knee 
beside the uneasy, stockingless foot, the warmth of which 
still clung to the thing in his unsteady hand. 

“Please.” Kathryn too, was wondering why her hate for 
this man was so fickle. She had every reason to shrink from 
his touch, yet she found herself at this moment inflamed with 
a willful desire for it. Realization of this fact shamed her, 
frightened her, brought back to her with terrifying force 
thought of what he was, of the race to which he belonged, 
of the thing he had transfused into her veins! Yet- 

When almost roughly he had thrust the little pink mule 


229 


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on to her bare white foot, and had looked up at her in odd 
triumph, she tilted her lovely head to one side, and, veiling 
her eyes with the lashes on which but a moment ago tears 
had glistened, smiled engagingly. 

Harrington stood up and got someway a little distance 
from her. Her aura intoxicated him. He wondered vaguely 
what more impulsive, less restrained men did when they fell 
under her spell, especially when she smiled at them like 
that. They could scarcely be blamed if they took her in 

their arms and- A wave of something flashed scorch- 

ingly through him. It was as though he had seen her in 
the arms of another man and had been burned by the 
sight. 

“I came here—” he returned sharply to the business of 
his call—“to tell you that you have been the tool of one of the 

most notorious criminals in the country. Your vanity-” 

he was thinking that her smile was warm red magic—“has 
made you stoop to the point of providing a cache for a 
smuggler of opium. How he dared in the first place to 
believe that you would serve him, I can’t understand. But 
once he discovered that you were willing to do whatever he 
asked you to do, he was certain that should things go 
smoothly, should he and his confederates succeed in throw¬ 
ing the police off their tracks, he had but to call upon you 
to get back his stock of precious stuff. It was a clever trick! 
They were-” 

“I—don’t want to hear. Can’t you see that I’m suffering 
enough?” interrupted Kathryn, flinging out her hands be¬ 
seechingly, her smile gone, her face ghastly. 

“Were safe either way,” continued her tormentor 

phlegmatically. “If the police got too close to them-” 

Was this real suffering? If it was, would something come 
of it, something fine and beautiful, like —a womans soulf — 
“they could always play their trump card. They could give 
the police a tip which would result in my being made to 
appear a Jekyll-Hyde sort of person,” he explained quietly. 






230 


THE AUTOCRAT 


his gaze mercifully releasing hers for one brief moment. 
‘‘They supposed, naturally enough, that this would put me 
out of the fight and at the same time win for them the con¬ 
fidence, even the gratitude, of the narcotic squad.” 

He stood straight and still for a little while, studying the 
two little pink mules that rested so lightly against the 
Persian rug. Finally his gaze lifted to the exquisitely molded 
hands that were fluttering aimlessly like frightened moths 
about the folds of cobwebby chiffon. She had lost her 
splendid poise, and her nervousness hurt him, but if she were 
to be transmuted into a being worthy of her physical charm, 
she must be held in the fire until her dross burned away. 
And when her dross had gone from her, love would come, 
and she would make some man happy, this Cyril McLennon 
perhaps, or that J. Gordon Bradlie Junior with whom she 
went about so much. Ah, well! At least he might be the 
Alchemist that turned her into gold. 

“This Cyril McLennon,” he said, raising his eyes at last 
to her tense, white face. “You would sacrifice his career 
*—the man himself even! Having agreed to cooperate with 
these fiends that I have been trying to defeat, you began 
at once to look around for somebody upon whom you could 
unload the task. You were not big enough to do the work 
yourself. You would take no risk. Like Lee Fong, Sing-a- 
Ling and Slippery Charley, you were playing safe. You in 
your turn looked about for a tool. You thought of Cyril 
McLennon whom you had patronized into slavery. You 
sent for him and when he came you vamped him—this man 
whose promise of marriage belongs to another, this struggling 
sculptor whose old mother admires and trusts you—into 
doing that which you yourself would not do. And when you 
learned that he had been caught and dragged off to jail 
you were no more concerned than you were when Wan 
Sing was being grilled in your presence. You-” 

“Oh, I did try to speak! You know that I tried to speak 
<—to explain. It was you who stopped me when I wanted 



THE AUTOCRAT 


23* 


to—to clear Cyril McLennon, and you stopped me again 
when I would have taken the guilt from Wan Sing. You 

are cruelly unfair. You know that I-” 

“That you had the impulse to speak, and that I stopped 
you only from making a dismal failure of that impulse. You 
would not have gone on. You would have said enough, per¬ 
haps, to arouse suspicion, but you would have stopped short 
of any real explanation, any real sacrifice. You see, I know’ 
you better than you know yourself. I’ve seen the you that 
you never see, because you refuse to look at that which is 
unbeautiful.” 

“I saw to-night!” whispered Kathryn, her head drooping. 
“You—made me look.” 

How lovely her hair was! And how poignantly he wanted 
to slide his fingers through it! Fiercely he remembered the 
fragrance of it. Forever its perfume would be in his nostrils. 
Forever he would feel the faery touch of its soft tendrils 
against his face. He had caught, he recalled, a willful little 

curl between his lips, and had- 

“What is Cyril McLennon to you? Or his weeping old 
mother? Or his sweetheart?” he began again abruptly. 
“What do you care about that loyal little Pekinese, who 
so steadfastly refused to speak the word that would place 
where it belongs the crime of which he is accused? You 
say I stopped you, yet you have been here in this room 
with a telephone an arm’s length away, and you did not 
call the chief of police to whose office you knew we had 
gone. You offered no confession, no effort to right the 
wrong you had forced upon others. You are Kathryn Lam¬ 
bert of Virginia, and because of that you could not be ex¬ 
pected to soil yourself with an acknowledgment of guilt.” 
“You don’t understand.” Kathryn’s lips writhed. “It 

was because you—because I-” 

“It was because-” he spoke slowly, sorrowfully—“you 

are a Catherine de Medici ? A Catherine de Medici who not 
only sacrifices those who love her, but furnishes her husband's 


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232 

foes with funds from her husband’s coffers. The police re¬ 
covered this from the pawn shop where it had been sold.” 

He tossed into her lap the ring which she had given to 
Cyril McLennon—the ring which was to provide the 
thousand dollars promised to Lee Fong. She stared at it 
wide-eyed, her hands shrinking away from it, her mind grop¬ 
ing blindly round and round the fact that this weird man 
seemed to know by some uncanny process, her every act. 

“Catherine de Medici was ruthless in her selfishness. You 
have copied her perfectly.” 

“Oh, you are right!” she cried springing to her feet and 
letting the jewel fall unheeded to the floor. “I’ve blighted 
every life I’ve touched. And—I—I’ve ruined my own.” 
She was crying now, walking up and down in front of him 
like a cowed leopardess under the lash of its trainer. “I 
am Catherine de Medici reincarnated! I am! I am! I’m 
unfit to touch your hand—you who are yellow. Inside,” she 
struck her veiled breast passionately, “I’m less white than 
you.” 

“Yellow!” his eyes became narrow slits. He took a quick 
step toward her, and stopped short. “They—told you that 
I was yellow ." 

She bent her head abstractedly. 

“Yellow! I, who have shown them no fear. They call 
me a coward. They-” 

She was not listening. She was beating with her two 
hands the inlaid table, and sobbing convulsively. 

“I’m bad! Shallow! Empty! My mother—she brought 
me into the world, but she gave me no soul! She didn’t 
want me! And all the time I lay within her, close to her 
half-mad heart, she was denying my right to be there— 
fiercely resenting my prenatal demands upon her. I inter¬ 
fered with her pursuit of pleasure. I was an unwelcome 
burden that could not yet be left with servants but must 
needs be carried about obscenely beneath her smart French 
frocks.” She left off beating the table finally and leaned 



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against it droopingly, a hand at her sobbing white throat. 
Then her head lifted with a little characteristic jerk, and 
she cried out sharply, like the leopardess lashed beyond 
endurance. 

“She gave me this—this face—this body, but she gave me 
no soul! I tell you,” her eyes clashed wildly into the man’s 
steady gaze, “she gave me no soul!'* 

“You are hysterical. You don’t know what you are say¬ 
ing. If I thought you did know, I should believe you to 
be even worse than I had supposed. But no woman, how¬ 
ever vain, however unfair, can sanely defend herself at the 
expense of— her mother —the being who bore her.” 

“I’m not sane. I’m not even pretending to be. I’m tired 
of pretending to be—anything but what you—have called 

me. What Jimmy-boy called me-” She laughed harshly. 

“Catherine de Medici! A selfish she-cat! And I’m doing-” 

she moved from the table and swayed close to him like some 
battered, storm-driven thing. “Do you know what I’m do¬ 
ing?” Her eyes blazed into his with an unholy fire. Her 
tawny braids whipped sharply against him as she jerked her 
head in emphasis. Her smile was crooked and uncertain. 
“I’m doing what my mother did before me. I’m carrying a 
burden—a hated, unwelcome burden to which I shall give 
a face and a body— your face and your body. But it shall 
have no soul, because I—I-” 

He caught her roughly by her two shoulders, his face 
twitching, his whole frame shaking. 

“What are you saying! My God! What are you say¬ 
ing!” He shook her half savagely. “Think! Kathryn! 
Think! Get your mind clear and— think T He tried vainly 
to hold the feverish gaze that kept escaping him. “Is there 
to be- Are you-” 

“Oh! I don’t want to think! There’s no exit. What’s 
the use thinking—thinking—thinking! Besides I—I’m al¬ 
ready mad—quite mad, I assure you!” She laughed jerkily. 
“Eugenics! Estelle wanted me—wanted me a long time 



234 


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ago—one night when the sleet was tapping like little fingers 

against her windows, to think about eugenics. And I-” 

“Answer me, Kathryn. For God’s sake answer me! Are 


“But I wanted tinsel, and my pride-” she began again 

to laugh. “Did you know,” she asked as she swayed against 
him, her long lashes fluttering over her hot dry eyes, “that 
you—have burned up my pride? Only it—its ashes remain. 
We ought to put them away with that—geranium in the 
mother-of-pearl casket and—and-” 

He gathered her up and laid her tenderly upon the pillow- 
strewn couch where she lay like a waxen flower uncon¬ 
scious of his chafing hands and of his tumbling words, 
though she was still speaking, still laughing and sobbing. 

The door opened softly and Lucy came into the room. 
Surprised at the sight which met her eyes, she would have 
retreated, but the man on his knees besides the chaise longue, 
called to her. 

“Mrs. Harrington,” he said, “is exhausted. She has been 
under a severe mental strain. I’m sorry that I had to add 
to it, and I think perhaps she’ll be easier if —if I retire from 
the room. Will you put her to bed, at once?” 

“She ordered me away, sir,” apologized Lucy, “but I 
couldn’t sleep. I kept wondering if she were resting. I was 
worried about her, sir. That’s why I came back.” 

“You’re fond of her.” He studied Lucy’s face apprais¬ 
ingly. “I’m glad. Grateful.” 

“I understand her, sir.” 

At another time he might have found a faint implication 
—a subtle significance, in the girl’s hurried defense of her 
faithfulness, but in this awed moment her words meant 
merely that love was understanding —heroic understanding. 

At the door John Harrington turned and looked back. 
The sobbing laughter crashed through his confused thoughts, 
and he went out wondering, hoping, uncertain. 

How uncanny that he should have talked to himself about 





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burning away her dross, and that she should tell him but 
a moment later that he had burned away her pride . . • 
And its face should be his facel And its body his bodyl 
“Did you sleep, ma’am?” Lucy asked on the following 
morning as she arranged the breakfast tray for her mistress. 

“I—don’t know.” Kathryn stared at Lucy’s hands as 
they busied themselves with the silver coffee things. “I 
thought a good deal. Perhaps I slept. I don’t know. Sleep¬ 
ing or waking—nightmare or reality, it’s all the same, there’s 
no way out; at least none,” her lips quivered for an instant, 
“that I’m brave enough to take.’ 

Lucy fumbled with the sugar tongs. A cube of sugar 
fell upon the topmost piece of toast. 

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’ll tell Herbert-” 

“It was awkward of you. But never mind. I shouldn’t 
*want three pieces of toast at any time, and this morning I 
shall want none at all.” She lifted a thin china cup to her 
lips and drank thirstily of its steaming golden coffee, as 
thoughtfully she inspected the tired face under her maid’s 
trim lace cap. “You must be wondering,” she said, as she 
set the cup back upon the tray, “what it’s all about. This 
mysterious business that is troubling me, I mean. You can’t 

help hearing and seeing-” 

“Madame’s business belongs to madame alone.” 

“But you see and hear—strange things, and of course, be¬ 
ing human, you wonder, conjecture. I think I shall tell 
you, Lucy, because you see, I’m going to—discharge you, 
and I think you have the right to know why.” 

“Madame!” The face beneath the lace cap was shocked, 
bewildered. 

“There’s no way out of it, Lucy.” Kathryn turned her 
eyes away from the startled face. “You see, I am going 
away, and—and I shouldn’t be able to—to pay you. I’ll 
have to get on with only—Chloe, Chloe will take care of 
me until—until I have learned to—take care of myself. It 
isn’t going to be easy-” 




236 THE AUTOCRAT 

“But, madame! I—you- Oh, ma’am, you’re quite 

out of your head.” 

“On the contrary, I’m painfully in it. It’s to save my¬ 
self from insanity that I’m going away. That’s the greatest 
of several reasons. The smallest reason for my going is 
the nagging of my conscience. It’s calling me among other 
ugly names, a cheating parasite. It—it isn’t quite fair 
though, is it, that these hands,” she held out her two narrow 
white hands and looked at them appreciatively, “should be 
compelled to perform sordid and unbeautiful tasks. They 
are experienced only in the art of charming. Their train¬ 
ing in that began at my birth. My nurses pressed my baby 
fingers to the desired tapering when their bones were still 
plastic. Their only burden has been the weight of jewels . . . 
While your hands, designed by the same great architect-” 

“My hands, madame, were made for work. There must 
always be-” 

“The workers and the idlers! The producers and the 
consumers! The builders and the destroyers!” Kathryn’s 
voice was raw with bitterness and self-condemnation. 

But though she could hiss herself she could not yet with 
sincerity, applaud those who were her antitheses, and even 
as she hissed, Egotism began to rap its gavel, and Self- 
Preservation to plead its cause. Her face took on a look of 
arrogant defiance. 

“You are right. We were cast in different molds, you 
and I,” she went on, once more the mistress addressing her 
maid. “But through some perversity of Fate I am driven 
to quit the luxuries which are my heritage, and enter upon 
a life to which I am unfitted. Because I make a pretense 
of playing fair, I shall presently—after my coffee, perhaps, 
tell you something of why I am entering a new life, sans 
Lucy.” 

Lucy made no response. She was startled, panic-stricken, 
and she busied herself nervously with preparations for her 
lady’s toilet. 



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237 


Kathryn took up the letter that lay atop the pile of mail, 
and glancing furtively past it at the two wide capable hands 
that were smoothing a faint crease from a pink undergarment, 
she slit open the envelope with a small jeweled paper knife 
which the tray provided. 

“And I thought she would insist upon going with me into 
this new life,” she mused bitterly, as she extracted from the 
envelope a folded square of plain white paper. 

Drina! Drina writing to tell her the dreadful happen¬ 
ing of which she was already so acutely cognizant. Drina 
begging her pardon for bringing even the shadow of trouble 
into the peace and calm of her happy life! The peace and 
calm of her happy life! In spite of the fact that Drina had 
once or twice looked into the boiling crater of her Inferno, 
she still could think of her as being calm and happy! Calm 
and happy! 

She laughed, and her laughter was so flat and dead, that 
Lucy’s eyes filled with tears at the sound. 

Drina’s note ran: 


Friday midnight— 

Dear Mrs. Harrington: 

Though I am reluctant to bother you, there is no onfc 
else to whom I can go in this hour of my great need. 

But before I write further, let me beg of you to keep 
secret from Cyril this request for help. Cyril would 
never forgive me should he learn that I brought into 
the peace and calm of your happy life the slightest 
shadow of a worry. Yet, it is for Cyril that I plead. 

A dreadful mistake has been made by the police. 
Cyril, because of some circumstantial evidence, the de¬ 
tails of which I have yet to learn, was arrested to-day! 
Think of it! Arrested! Cyril McLennon who would 
not hurt a living thing! He would have sent no word 
to me—to anyone in fact—except for the sake of his 
mother. I’m with her now. She doesn’t know. She 


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thinks he’s been called away on business. They let him 
telephone to me, and when I wanted to know more 
about his trouble, he begged me to ask no questions, 
insisted that it would be cleared up at once, and that 
at once it must be forgotten. He said something about 
a dear friend who would in all probability immediately 
explain things to the satisfaction of the police. But this 
friend has done nothing up to now—midnight. At 
twelve o’clock, with Mother McLennon sound asleep, I 
crept upstairs to the studio ’phone. A desk sergeant in¬ 
formed me that Cyril- Oh! I can’t bear to write 

it-- Anyway, the friend had not come to his rescue! 

Whoever that so-called friend is—I hope that God will 
find for him a fitting punishment. 

I tried all evening to reach you by telephone. But 
you were out—at a theater party, your butler told me. 
Now, knowing that in the morning with Cyril’s mother 
awake, I shall have no opportunity to call you, I am 
writing this to implore you to intercede for Cyril. 
There must be something you can do that will straighten 
out the tangle of circumstances that has enmeshed him. 

I shall not sleep, and the hours until I hear from 
you will be endless, but I shall keep telling myself that 
the wrong done Cyril will be righted—that my fairy- 
book princess will go at once to his aid. 

Drina. 

Kathryn leaned back among her pillows, and as she called 
to Lucy to remove the breakfast things, a thin, resolute smile 
touched the corners of her lips. 

“I shall want street things,” she said hurriedly, “and the 
car. Have it at the door immediately I am dressed. I shall 
talk with you later.” 

And with that thin smile still curving the line of her red 
mouth, and a strange glow in the heavily fringed eyes, she 
left the house that was frozen music, and drove out into 
the gold of a summer’s day. 

Somewhere on a nearby street a hurdy-gurdy was sending 



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239 


into the balmy air a gay, rollicking melody. A broken pro¬ 
cession of nursemaids paraded behind perambulators and 
lusty-lunged children, on the gravel walk between the street 
and the shimmering river where yachts skimmed along like 
white-winged butterflies or made anchored daubs against the 
glittering fish-scale ripples. The sky was unsullied. The 
sun—an amorous, naked thing—stared through the leafy 
garments of the trees at the frank caresses of unabashed 
bench lovers. The pavement which seemed to run to meet 
the cushioned wheels of the Harrington limousine, was 
etched with mauve shadows, while here and there were 
splotches of iridescent oil. Now and then a pair of 
sparrows, forced to abandon their find, fluttered into the 
air with a chatter of protest as the car bore down upon them. 
A tugboat was gliding sleepily up the river, its film of smoke 
rising lazily from its funnel and trailing a little way behind 
like a long black pennant. An omnibus approached rattlingly 
from the opposite direction, swung top-heavily alongside the 
plum-colored limousine and disappeared in the direction 
from which the limousine had just come. A hundred feet 
ahead a woman in a strident red golf sweater picked her 
way across the pavement, hanging to the strained leash of a 
collie dog and smiling in recognition of a cap that was being 
waved to her by a man whose English tweeds made a buff 
patch against a strip of green grass. 

At the corner of Broadway and Seventy-second when the 
cross-town current had dammed, and backed up on itself, 
Kathryn looked out at the flow of pedestrians and wondered 
what tragedies lay behind the faces that smiled or frowned 
past her. Last night as the center of the Universe, hers had 
been the one and only tragedy. In this detached moment 
she was a mere atom and of no more importance than 
that old woman out there huddling along in her shabby, 
flapping skirts and dejected bonnet. What sorrow might not 
be under the breast of that faded black frock? An 
invalid husband—a son condemned by the law and sentenced 


a 40 


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to die—a wayward daughter . . . And that man standing 
there on the corner, uncertain and queerly, mutely apologetic! 
His hollow eyes and bloodless face—the cough that he was 
trying to choke back with the clutch of a thin hand at his 
narrow chest! How tragic he looked. How utterly 
wretched! 

She leaned back against the cushions and shut her eyes. 
Too long had she filled the center of the stage to relish the 
part of onlooker, and when in the moment just past she had 
looked out at Life, and found interest in the tragedies of 
other players, she had filled suddenly with dull resentment 
against that momentary interest; had felt, in spite of her fine 
scorn for the feeling, that she had been disloyal to herself. It 
was silly of her to sentimentalize over the possible troubles 
of others, she thought, when her own troubles were so 
pitilessly real. Then instantly she was ashamed of the 
thought and of herself. 

“Catherine de Medici!” she whispered into the cold 
narrow hands that covered her mouth and her little round 
chin. But even as she flayed herself she cried out commiserat- 
ingly: “It isn’t fair that I should be made to suffer so! 
It isn’t fair!” 

The plum-colored car had swung into the street where 
was the studio that had graduated from a stable, before 
she again opened her eyes. Someone had called her name 
and she sat up quickly, her senses confused, the bright sun¬ 
light blurring her vision with its white glare. 

“The look in your face, my lady,” a man was at the open 
window of the car that had come to a stop, a man with 
Celtic bluish gray eyes in which there was no faintest sign 
of merriment, “it fairly frightens me!” 

“Cyril!” Kathryn leaned forward, her breath coming 
in sharp staccato gusts from between her lips. 

The man bowed his bared head. 

“ ’Tis I.” He raised adoring eyes, in which there was no 
slightest hint of reproach, once more to her face and smiled. 


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241 


“And you—I should have known that I would find you here¬ 
abouts.” He described an encompassing circle with the 
square hand which held his straw hat. “I should have known 
that at once you would come down here.” Then anxiously: 
“She does not know about last night—my mother?” 

“She believes you were called away on business,” 
murmured Kathryn tensely. Then getting her shattered 
nerves under better control, she indicated the silver-handled 
door and asked him to get in and drive about with her for 
half an hour. She must talk with him. She must know all 
that had happened. She must beg him to forgive her. 

“The sun sometimes scorches the face of one, but one 
does not talk about forgiving the sun, nor does one want 
never to see it again,” he said as he took his seat beside her, 
and the car began to move round the corner and away from 
the block in which was his studio. 

“Your generosity, Cyril, cannot lessen my sense of guilt. 
Last night when the news reached me—the news of 
your-” 

“Is it of last night we must talk when there is to-day 
before us? Was ever a day more wonderful?” He looked 
about appreciatively, at the shadow-dappled streets, the 
little park with its cool green trees, a huckster’s cart heaped 
high with fruits, a young girl in a saucy crisp frock. 

“It is apt to look very beautiful to you,” Kathryn agreed, 
her gaze following his, “by contrast with—last night. I’m 
afraid it doesn’t seem so fine to me. I’m still floundering 
in —in the dark, Cyril.” 

He turned and looked at her. 

“Then you do not know-” 

“I know only that I was the blind tool of my husband’s 
enemies, and that I sacrificed you!” Kathryn touched his 
arm remorsefully with her white gloved fingers. “I can’t 
tell you how sorry I am,” she turned her tired eyes full upon 
him, “that I dared to drag you through the slime of my 
affairs. Nor can you understand how glad I am to find 



242 


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you down here so—unexpectedly.” She moistened her lips. 
“How did you—get out?” 

“Through the help of your husband, fair lady. And 
isn’t he the great man, this John Harrington? And ’tis I 
that am a lucky dog to have had the privilege of serving 
him, even though unwittingly, in his fight against the traffic 
in illicit drugs. The—the incident of yesterday has brought 
about a real cleanup. A member of the narcotic squad 
told me--” 

“Then it was he who effected your—release.” 

“John Harrington, yes. And didn’t the newspaper men 
gasp when he let them in on his own private affairs! It’s 
I that am telling you, wonder-lady, that by night there won’t 
be a newspaper in the state that will not have his name 
in inch type. His real name! And the true story of his 
life. He said that personally, he would prefer to continue 
through the remainder of his life as John Harrington, but 
that family matters necessitated-” 

“Family matters!” Kathryn’s voice was a strained 
whisper. 

McLennon nodded his great head. 

“Said he no longer had the right to masquerade. And 
the reporters were informed that the Chinese consul would 
not only corroborate but would prove his story. Ah! it’s 
a great world, this, where men like John Harrington live, 
and women like your own good self keep close their husband’s 
secrets. It’s a great world where a bunch of Chinks-” 

“Please! I—can’t hear any more. I don’t know what 
this is that you are telling me. I know only that it must 
mean the—end.” 

“For—you and—me?” The young Irishman sighed. “But 
of course! It isn’t the likes of me that you’ll be looking at 
after to-day. But I’ll be looking at you—in here,” he tapped 
the breast of his blue serge coat, “always, sweet lady. 
Always!” 

Kathryn tried to smile, but her lips were stiff, and a 



THE AUTOCRAT 


243 


great self-pity engulfed her. It was the end. John Harring¬ 
ton had publicly acknowledged his position in the world— 
his real name—his race. For her it meant oblivion! Black 
oblivion! 

“ . . . and I knew she’d watch the mater. Poor little 
Drina!” The sculptor was speaking. The last words of 
his sentence broke through Kathryn’s daze like shafts of light 
through a fog. 

Drina! Ah, yes! She must explain that she had not 
been to his home, had made not even an inquiry, and had 
had news of his mother only through Drina’s imploring 
note. She must tell him too, that he must put her out of 
his thoughts and take Drina more deeply into them. She 
must make him understand with what little seriousness she 
had accepted his—admiration, how wanton and empty of 
truth had been her smiles. She must send him to Drina 
with open arms ... If she could do this, she would feel 
that in a small measure she had expiated the wrong she 
had done them. 

“Drina—she’s there in your studio waiting for you,” she 
began breathlessly, her face averted, her white gloved hands 
tense in her lap. Then swiftly, insistently she made her 
confession and her plea, and when finally at a word from 
the man on the seat beside her, the limousine drew up at 
the curb, and a wide trembling hand gripped one of the 
narrow gloved ones, she sat up very straight and lifted her 
small head high in the air. It was as though her vanity 
were saying: “See! How splendidly I have made this 
renunciation! Surely a woman who can sing the praises of 
another woman while she is inviting contempt for herself, 
is not hopelessly selfish—not altogether bad!” 

And looking up at her from the curbing, Cyril McLen- 
non’s gray eyes grew moist and into his heart came a great 
compassion, an infinite tenderness and understanding. 

“If I can afford to marry, it is because you, dear lady, 
brought success to my humble door. I shall do as you wish 


244 


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—perhaps deep within me it is still my wish—I don’t know. 
But some day when my sharp want of you has mellowed 
into—into a thing I can trust, may we not come to see you, 
Drina and I?” 

Kathryn moved her head slightly without looking at him. 

“And your mother, Cyril! There has never been any 
pretense in the smiles I have given to her. For her there 
has been only sincerity. You believe that, Cyril?” 

“You have made her immeasurably happy. I—think she 
has—has been weaving wonderful dreams—beautiful dreams 
of star-dust.” 

“About you and—me?” Kathryn looked round now, her 
gaze meeting the sculptor’s clear, honest eyes. 

“About you and—me,” he repeated, his voice dropping 
to a whisper. 

“And yet,” Kathryn’s small chin quivered, “I think she 
knew the—the real me. Sometimes, Cyril, her dim old eyes 
have challenged me, and sometimes they’ve hurt me, shamed 
me with their pleading, their frightened prayers. She 
wanted for you, my friend, anything she thought you wanted, 
but she couldn’t help being a little unhappy when she found 
you wanting something—unworthy of you.” 

“But you were a star so high above our earth, mother’s 
and mine.” 

“Only a gilded star, Cyril, and she missed my warmth. 
And when I married, I became a thing of danger. Oh, I 
know. I’ve seen it in her face, heard it in her voice.” 

“She loves you!” 

“In those moments when she can forget that I—menace 
her boy.” Kathryn paused, abstractedly studying for the 
space of a long-drawn breath, the silver and crystal toilet 
accessories pocketed in the car’s gray velour. “No,” she went 
on finally, “she will not be sorry that I have sent you back 
—to Drina. And some day, as you have just suggested, 
you and Drina will come to see me, and there will be grati- 


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245 


tude in your heart. And you will bring her, your mother, 
and in her eyes I shall find—a prayer of thanksgiving.” 

“ ’Tis prayers you’ll be having from all of us, sweet lady. 
Prayers for your eternal happiness. And if ever you should 
be needing me again-” 

Kathryn shook her head dismally, a wan smile touching 
the corners of her mouth. 

“I shall be needing only—strength, Cyril. And if you— 
if you should pray for me—ever, pray that I may be strong 
-—strong enough, Cyril, to overcome my—weaknesses.” 

“Ah! If I could know what it is that puts that hurt 
in your eyes! If only it lay within the puny power of me 
to make you—happy. For it’s blind I’d be if I didn’t see 
the misery of you! I’ve told myself that it’s none of my 
affair—those times when I’ve seen you crying underneath 
your smile—but I want you to know, dear butterfly-lady,” 
the wide square hand tightened its grip on the slender fingers 
that had taken no cognizance of his touch, “that the heart 
of me is aching for you, and that the body of me is ready to 
die for you.” 

“Don’t! You’re heaping coals of fire upon me! That 
you should—care for me like that! God forgive me!” 

“If making folks love you is a sin, sure it’s not a good 
saint there is in heaven! You’re that fine and lovely-” 

“Oh, Cyril!” She laid her free hand on his bared head, 
and looked down at him sorrowfully. “You’re so big and 
splendid! Put me out of your thoughts—out of your life. 
I’m not fit to be in either.” 

“My lady! Kathryn!” He was leaning into the car, his 
face flushed, his eyes hotly wet. 

“Please! There’s your mother and—and Drina. And 

there’s—my husband. And there’s going to be-” The 

slim gloved hand wrenched itself free from his clasp and 
fluttered up to her palpitating throat. 

For a long tense moment Cyril McLennon stood breath¬ 
less there beside the car of the lady he loved, staring up 




246 


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at her beautiful face with awe and reverence, then once 
again his fingers touched hers, this time gently, deferentially, 
and though he tried to speak, his lips moved mutely, no 
sound would come from his emotion-choked throat. And 
then he was alone on the street corner, standing bare¬ 
headed under the passionate sun, with all his own passion 
vitiated within him. 

His red rose had changed into a lily—his butterfly into 
a sacristy. 


CHAPTER XXII 


A HEAVY lethargy enveloped Kathryn the moment 
necessity for conversation was no longer upon her. 
She made no effort to think. She was suddenly 
spent, inert, incapable of either mental or physical exertion. 
Far down beneath her numbness was some strange new 
fear, but it was dull and incomprehensible. Vaguely 
she was conscious of some monstrous trouble impending— 
a scandal that John Harrington was in someway inviting, 
but she had neither the wish nor the strength to remember 
exactly what it was. It was as though she had run up the 
white flag because her forces were too weakened for further 
defenses. She was vanquished. Ignobly defeated. She was 
tired to death with the sickening demands of Self-Preserva¬ 
tion. Let the worst come—let anything happen! She 
wanted only to rest—to hide somewhere with sheathed 
sword and a deafness to the call of combat. 

“The Schuylers’, ma’am!” 

Kathryn turned her head without interest or inquiry. The 
limousine had come to a stop before an imposing apartment 
house on Park Avenue, and one of her liveried men 
was standing at attention beside the car’s opened door, 
i “Madame’s instructions when we started from home this 
morning, were—the McLennon studio and after that the 
Park Avenue Schuylers’.” 

For a brief labored interval Kathryn tried to make the 
name just mentioned, fit into her immediate existence. 
Hazily memory rewarded the effort. A wedding breakfast! 
That was it! There was to have been a wedding at St. 
247 


248 


THE AUTOCRAT 


Thomas Church to which she hadn't planned to go. But 
the Schuylers’ were giving a wedding breakfast for the bride 
—their daughter—and she had meant to attend this. She 
had wanted one more glimpse of the life which had meant 
so much to her and which she was on the verge of quitting 
forever. 

“The Schuylers’, of course!” she said, touching her cheeks 
mechanically with a tiny powder puff. And then—somehow 
she had entered the building and had been whisked in an 
elevator to the Schuylers’ floor, and been pounced upon by 
a lot of gushing, incoherent people who appeared to be try¬ 
ing, all at once, to congratulate her and to kiss he* and to 
paw her over. 

“You minx, to have kept his secret with him!” 

“And all for such a strange reason—quite like Thoreau 
*—or was it Ruskin—or-” 

“Wanted people to like him for himself —for what they 
found in him, and not for his title or what it might stand 
for or suggest!” 

“Oh! But you're sly, dear Lady Harrington! Why! 
even your aunt says she hasn’t a doubt but that you came 
someway into possession of his secret long ago, and that you 
married him because you knew that he was Lord John Har¬ 
rington and—well, naturally this fact didn’t in the least de¬ 
tract from the power of his millions! Why, Estelle says-” 

“That when you set about vamping him, you were prob¬ 
ably easing your conscience with the thought that even an 
English Earl ought to be proud to marry a Lambert of 
Virginia.” 

“Imagine an expatriated earl becoming a naturalized New 
Yorker!” 

“And getting himself nominated for mayor on the very 
day that he and a Chinaman or two and several Britishers 
from Washington, give his life’s story to the newspapers! 
Renounces his right to a title in favor of his right to be an 



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249 

American citizen. Barnum wasn’t in his class when it came 

to springing surprises. And Kathryn here-” 

“Yes, Kathie, indeed! Get away all of you, and let me 
kiss my own dear niece! My darling Lady Kathryn! 
Fancy! Lady Kathryn! With no end of estates in England, 
and miles and miles of rice fields or—or silk worms or— 

whatever it is that they grow in China. And-” 

“Chop sticks, Estelle! Chop sticks and pig tails!” 

“Pearls and jade and fine old ivories, you mean, Vivian 
Pemberton.” 

“All right, T. Gordon Junior. Pearls and jade and ivories 
•—and narcissus and demure little women with eyes that 
slant just a degree more than Lord Harrington’s.” 

“But his eyes slant, you know, because his mother-” 

“Never mind the details about that, Ralph. We read 
them in the newspapers. Poor little girl who died that 
he might live. There’s a picture of her in The Herald, 
taken from an old photograph which is said to be Harring¬ 
ton’s greatest treasure. On the back of the photograph, 
so The Herald said, is the word Plum-Blossom. It seems 
that this was her husband’s pet name for her, and that later 
after her death, the old mandarin with whom Harrington 
lived in his childhood, called her this, in his talks to the 
boy about the woman who had died at his birth. Thus 
the boy came to know her—not as one knows a mother, 
but as one knows a beautiful plum-blossom that has budded, 
bloomed and died. It’s all so sad and so—so exquisite, don’t 
you think so, Kathryn dear?” 

Kathryn stared achingly at the group of friends that sur¬ 
rounded her. Their words had beat upon her bruisinglj 
—had climbed over her and through her, and had fallen 
back into the swirling eddy of her thoughts where they had 
floundered senselessly, meaninglessly. Now suddenly she felt 
herself falling, dropping through endless space, and she 
caught frantically at the arm of J. Gordon Junior, just as 



'250 THE AUTOCRAT 

understanding swept like a tornado through the chaos of 
her mind. 

“Take me away. Jimmy-boy, from these—these vul¬ 
garians.” She managed to twist her mouth into a caricature 
of an arrogant smile, to narrow her eyes and lift her brows 
in sham superciliousness, and to leave the group with no 
single member of it guessing that it had brought to her first 
word of the news which since two hours back, every news- 
j paper in the city had been flaunting on its front page. 

“Kathie darling!” her uncle’s wife called after her as 
Jimmy led her off to a flower-bowered corner, “the Schuylers 
are waiting to be congratulated and to— congratulate . 
Franz and Anna! They’re in the next room with a crowd 
of guests. The bridal couple have breakfasted and gone. 
I knew you’d not be here in time to be congratulated by 
them—and, of course, for them to be congratulated by you! 
And- She doesn’t pay any attention to me!” she com¬ 

plained turning appealingly back to the chattering group 
of Schuyler guests, her hands fluttering in aimless gestures, 
her smile almost patronizing. “Naturally,” she confided 
with a Kathryn-Lambert-Lady Harrington lift of her brows, 
“the child is over-wrought. Though why she should be the 
least bit excited, is beyond me! A title can add nothing to 
the social prestige of a Lambert. Though, it will place us, 
when we go over to England in the near future,” she empha¬ 
sized the pronouns and let go of them reluctantly, as though 
the taste of them was exceedingly palatable, “in the front 
ranks with royalty.” 

Estelle Van Kemp’s Anglomania swelled. It distended 
until it overshadowed Estelle-the-aunt-by-marriage or Estelle- 
the-friend. Exhausting England as a topic, she talked of the 
“jade industry,” of “ancestral estates” and of whether or not 
it was Ruskin who because he wanted to be liked for him¬ 
self alone, went off somewhere and chopped wood and built 
boats. 

It was when someone was explaining to her aunt that the 


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251 


man she was describing was not Ruskin but Peter The 
Great, who though Czar of Russia, had lived as a laborer 
in Holland, that Kathryn sank down upon a flower-strewn 
divan and turned expectantly to Jimmy. 

“What is it all about? What is it? What is it? I 
think I shall go stark mad if you don’t make order out of 
the jumble of words they’ve flung into my aching head. 
Or—am I—already mad!” She clutched convulsively at the 
sleeve of the grave-faced young man who was looking down 
at her with a sort of awed hopelessness in his face. “Jimmy! 
Jimmy! Am I mad? Did those people say a—a lot of 

queer things to me about—about him, or- Oh! Jimmy! 

don’t tell me that its all a fabric woven by my own imagi¬ 
nation. Don’t tell me that, Jimmy! I—I—think I couldn’t 
bear-” 

The young man laughed shortly, unpleasantly. 

“Your title is quite safe, Lady Harrington! Quite real! 
And so, I suppose, are the estates in England and the great 
silk factories in China. So, too, is your dramatic Lord 
Harrington!” 

“Then it—it’s all true—the things they said!” 

“So his lordship says, my lady, and so say the big men 
in Washington who have added by wire and ’phone, the 
details which he pretended to be too modest to give to the 
reporters.” 

“Jimmy!” 

Kathryn’s eyes flashed. She stood up, pushing him from 
her indignantly. 

“I don’t know why you prefer to call me—to call me 
anything but that which you have always called me— Kath¬ 
ryn — a nd I—I don’t care much, though I’d like to—to have 
you be kind to me just now. But I can’t let you be sar¬ 
castic about my—my—about John Harrington.” She 
swallowed convulsively. “I think no aspersion should be 
made involving the modesty of—of an— earl who voluntarily 
shrouded his past with so much mystery that it caused him 


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252 

to be treated with suspicion—to be even sneered at. Fm 
sorry you-” 

“I’m sorry, too. Forgive me.” Something of the bitter¬ 
ness that had carved itself on the boy’s face, faded into a look 
®f sadness as he spoke, and Kathryn, reassured, sank back 
upon the flowered divan. 

“Jimmy,” she said rather flatly, “why did he never tell 
me?” 

Jimmy stared. 

“You mean-” 

“That all of you knew it before I did. I haven’t seen 

to-day’s papers, and I’ve talked to no one. That is- 

Yes. I did talk to a man who seemed to know something 
of all this, but he took it for granted that I knew, and he— 
he didn’t tell me. It—it’s all rather—rather strange, 
Jimmy!” 

“It’s unfair!” blurted Jimmy hotly. 

“No, Jimmy. No. He’d the right to want—to want 
people—to want me to like him for himself. He—he didn’t 
realize, I guess, that his—his money was glamour enough. 
No. He’s been fair. It’s I who have been cheated.” 

“I believe,” cried Jimmy accusingly, “that you love him!” 

At Kathr)m’s queer, staring silence he straightened his 
young figure and squared his jaws. 

“Oh, well-! I—I’m not going to let myself be 

terribly cut up about it.” There was a catch in his voice 
as he spoke and he could not keep the tears from his eyes. 
“You know,” he went on, making a painful effort at bravado, 
“that I’ve thought—hoped, prayed even,—and I’m not 
ashamed about the praying either—” he flung round on her 
defiantly—“that you’d come to see that you really love me, 
and that—that you’d leave him.” 

“I am leaving him, Jimmy. To-night.” 

Jimmy stared again. The determined tenseness of his 
jaws gave way. They fell apart. His lips were trembling. 

“You’re leaving him! Lord Harrington!” 






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353 

Kathryn nodded. An odd calm had settled suddenly upon 
her. 

“Then you- Ah, Kathryn, dear! Kathryn, dear!” 

“I’m afraid you don’t understand, Jimmy. But it’s my 
fault.” Once more she was driving herself on to confession. 
“I’ve encouraged you, held on to you, kept you tied to me, 
satisfied my vanity with you, but never, Jimmy, because I— 
because I-” 

“Because you—loved me!” 

She inclined her head, then lifting it until she could look 
squarely at him from beneath the broad brim of her straw 
hat, she went on inexorably. 

“That I have not ruined your life, is my one glad thought. 
Women like me who feed on the love men offer up to them, 
are to blame for so many broken characters, so many suicides. 
J/m quitting the game, though, Jimmy. I’m going off some¬ 
where by myself and make peace—with my conscience.” 

“And how about me? I- Oh, Kathryn, let me go 

with you. Please, dear. Life will be nothing without you. 
Whatever you’ve done to me—or to others—I don’t care, 
dear. I love you! Let me go away with you!” 

“No, Jimmy. It can’t be. Now or ever. But,” a little 
smile that he did not see, came into her face, “you are young, 
and youth recovers quickly.” 

He stiffened and his boyish face flushed angrily. 

How well she knew him! How deftly had she struck his 
vulnerable spot! 

It was not ten minutes later that J. Gordon Bradlie 
Junior was flagrantly, ostentatiously flirting with a dark 
little debutante, and though he was laughing continuously, 
Kathryn could not help noticing that now and then his lips 
trembled and that his face was very white. She found 
promise, however, in the manner in which the little debutante 
received his advances. There was a sweet sincerity in her 
dark eyes, and a reassuring sign of determination in the con¬ 
tour of her small pointed chin. 



254 


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“Perhaps,” she mused a little wistfully as, getting away 
from the crowd, she made her way down to her car, “youth 
does recover easily. I wonder—shall I ?” Then she smiled 
bitterly. “But I’m not young. The body of me—the face 
of me, yes. But inside I’m old! Shriveled up! Done1” 

And on the way home, she realized that she had begun to 
burn her bridges. And if, for one brief instant, there flashed 
through her the tempting thought of what it might mean to 
be the wife of a man of title, even though that title were a 
renounced one, it is to her credit that she thrust the thought 
hastily from her, and regretted that it could have come to 
her at all. 

Besides- 

His eyes slanted because his mother- 

What was it somebody had said or started to say, about 
his mother—about why his eyes slanted ? . . . She shuddered. 
Why hadn’t the newspapers said anything about last night? 
Had he cleared up that affair? Cyril could have told her 
all about what had happened, but she’d been too anxious 
to get her confession off her mind, to permit him to talk to 
her. She’d been afraid of her vanity. Afraid that it might 
abort that confession, convince her that it was quixotic, silly. 
Well, Wan Sing could tell her. She’d see him directly 
she had reached home. 

Had John Harrington given his story at last to the world, 
because she had—because she had told him that she—that 
she . . . Or had he done it because it was necessary in the 
straightening up of last night’s trouble, and would at the 
same time give him a unique position in politics? 

Immediately she had pondered this last thought, she was 
ashamed. Whatever else she might think about the man 
she had married, she could attribute to him no unworthy 
motive. Of this at least she was sure: John Harrington 
whether white or yellow, was a man. 

She asked her driver to stop at a street corner for a news¬ 
paper, and as she rode along she read the story of the man 



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255 


whose name she bore. She learned that his father had married 
a show girl in London, and that because of wagging tongues, 
he had gone off with his bride to China. That here during 
an uprising of hatchet-men, Lord Harrington was killed 
as he stood protecting his wife. And that a few months 
later a son was born to the young widow who died before 
she had heard her infant’s first cry. 

Lord Harrington had been much embittered when he quit 
his native land, and in his will appeared a clause which de¬ 
manded that should he die away from the land that had 
refused to accept as his wife the woman he loved, he should 
be buried as near as possible to the place where he had died. 
A rich old mandarin of whom he had been sincerely fond, 
and in front of whose palace he was slain, provided a place 
on his own hillside for the remains of Lord Harrington. 
Lady Harrington was buried there beside him and a slip of a 
plum tree was planted at the head of her grave, because the 
mandarin knew that she had been called Plum-Blossom by 
her husband. And because Lord Harrington’s will appointed 
this fine old Manchu, guardian “without restrictions,” of his 
child, should he leave one of minor age, there grew up in 
the Manchu’s palace a little English earl whose eyes had the 
slant of a Chinaboy—due to prenatal influence of the Chinese 
uprising—who was trained in the teachings of the white 
man’s Christ with the same painstaking care that he was 
taught the philosophies of Confucius. To the Manchu’s 
palace came fine gentlemen from the English Colony—for 
the Manchu was himself a very fine gentleman and was held 
in high esteem by the foreigners in the city who sipped tea 
from iao cups, discussed international affairs, and wondered 
intensely what the future held in store for the little earl 
who looked at them, when on occasion he happened to be 
summoned, out of unreadable eyes that slanted sharply, and 
who spoke Chinese to the Manchu with the same silken 
smoothness that toned the precise English in which he talked 
to them. 


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256 

When the boy reached his majority the mandarin thought 
it wise and right that he should go to live in his father’s 
country. The boy sailed away with all the enchantment and 
eagerness of youth. But in England his oblique eyes, ivory 
skin and foreign manner caused a frown of suspicion. His 
mother, it was recalled, had been a music-hall girl, and— 
there was no telling, of course, of what she might or might 
not have been guilty. The young lord sensed this frown 
and came finally to read it aright. His heart ached with 
hot anger, but he smiled courteously, and still smiling 
courteously, he turned his estates back into the hands of his 
London solicitors and took the first steamer for China. 

The old Manchu listened to the story of the returned 
young earl without applause or reproach, but he could not 
hide his happiness at having back again his beloved almost - 
son. At his death all his wealth including his vast silk 
interests were left to “John Harrington.” It was one day 
a year or two after the demise of the powerful old Manchu, 
during ome internal friction, that this same John Harring¬ 
ton fought his way through a crowd of Chinamen run amuck, 
and picked up from under their trampling feet a tiny Chinese 
boy. He carried the child to his palace and there, during the 
several following years, when he was in America quietly 
gathering up loose financial strings, this scrap of humanity 
came under the tutelage of servants who did not believe in 
the white man’s God. When the boy was still little more 
than an infant, and still unclaimed by parent or friend, John 
Harrington came to the decision that America offered the best 
chances for a man who wants to be known chiefly as a man, 
and arranging for the sort of guardianship that would permit 
of his small charge accompanying him, he returned to New 
York, where to-day in his home this little Wan Sing un- 
smilingly told inquiring reporters that Lord Harrington was 
his “velly gleat” master —early training under the guidance 
of menials having left him with a servant’s point of view. 
Lady Harrington was not in when the reporters called . . „ 


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257 


Kathryn dropped the newspaper to the floor of the car. 
It was true then! And the four and a half months just 
past were of nightmare tissue! John Harrington did not 
belong to that—other race. Neither was he of low birth. 
He came of England’s best stock ... And she had patron¬ 
ized him! How she had patronized him! How tre¬ 
mendously her manner of superiority must have amused 
him! . . . How humiliating it would be for her if she 
should see him again! But she would not have to suffer 
that mortification. Pride forbade her to remain another 
night in his house. It was one thing to accept shelter 
from the man who, she believed, had cheated her ... It 
was quite another thing to accept the slightest favor from 
the man whom she had cheated. 

She lifted her head proudly, and from beneath her wide 
straw hat, looked unseeingly out of the car. 

Exile! That’s what it was to be for her! She knew it 
now. Knew what the thing was that had been struggling 
within her for recognition. Knew that she had fought a 
losing fight against it. With the obstacle of race removed, 
her mind had let go its restraining grip and now as she 
examined her battle-bruised heart, she was amazed to find 
how perfectly had thrived the unacknowledged thing that 
she had tried so hard to smother. 

The height of his social stratum did not argue for him. 
He belonged to her race! Nothing else mattered. He was 
the man whose voice had the power to charm her—whose 
touch had the power to thrill her. He was the man she 
had married—the man whose arms had held her close through 
all of one long sweet night. He was-- 

Again a liveried man was at the door of the car, and 
again she looked at him blankly. 

“Home, ma’am?” 

“Home!” she echoed the word as if it had no meaning 
for her, but once inside the house, the mental haze lifted 
and Lucy was ordered to pack her trunks immediately. 



2 $8 


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“And remember,” she was looking at the girl pointedly, 
“you are to pack only those things which I brought—to 
this house.’’ 

“Yes, my lady. And Lord Harrington- Shall I ask 

Herbert-•” 

“You’ve seen the papers!” observed Kathryn, devoting her 
attention to the unsnapping of a glove. 

“Yes, my lady. And Lord Harrington-” 

“I am going alone. My plans of this morning are un¬ 
changed.” 

“Then Lord Harrington-” the maid repeated the 

name with pardonable pride, “is remaining—here.” 

“I told you this morning, Lucy, that I’d explain to you 
the reasons for my quitting this house—for my leaving Mr. 

*—for my leaving Lord Harrington. Well,” she tossed the 
floppy straw hat on to the chaise longue, “since I told you 
that—since a few short hours ago—my reasons for going 
have changed, though the impelling thing behind them is 
still the same. Pride. Pride that I had thought burned 
out. You see,” she was standing now in front of the inlaid 
table, stripping the jewels from her arms and fingers, “this 
morning I was going because—I thought my—husband had 
cheated me. An hour from now I shall be going be¬ 
cause-” she flung round suddenly with a hint of her 

old defiance, “because I have found that it is I who have 
been the cheat.” 

“I don’t care, ma’am,” murmured Lucy, “why you are 

leaving- I know only that all day I’ve been miserable 

with thinking about your going away without me. With¬ 
out anybody to take care of you! If you’ll let me go, 
ma’am,” she had begun to cry a little and her hands trembled 
as they fumbled at her small white apron, “you needn’t 
worry about—about paying me, and I—and I •” 

Kathryn stared. 

“Lucy,” she said, “before I married, I was paying your 
salary out of my principal; I hadn’t an income worthy the 




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259 


name. Now/* her lovely mouth moved convulsively for 
an instant, then it straightened determinedly, “I haven’t even 
the—the principal. And, of course, I couldn’t take you 

with me—not having the money to-” 

“Please ma’am! I—I think nobody on earth can take' 
care of you as I can. I—understand you. I—forgive me, 
my lady, I love you.” ^ 

Kathryn’s face flushed. 5 

“But I’ve not been very kind to you. I’ve been- ” j 

“You’ve been— you, madame.” 

There was a silent moment in which mistress and maid 
stared at each other mistily, then Kathryn, her fingers 
wandering in their characteristic way across the white column 
of her throat, said with unaccustomed gentleness: 

“No. I couldn’t let you come, Lucy. I’m trying to 
unlearn a lot of things and chief among them is selfishness* 

I’ve been an unfair tyrant-” 

“A beautiful tyrant, ma’am!” 

“A tyrant, Lucy. And I’ve done so much damage, nofc 
the half of which perhaps, I shall ever realize. But I’m 
going away—going to begin all over again.” 

“And Lord Harrington, ma’am ?” Lucy ventured timidly. 
“Lord Harrington! . . . It’s all rather strange, isn’t it, 
Lucy?” The tips of Kathryn’s fingers pressed her gold 

veiled temples. “The servants- Were they surprised? 

What do they say?” j 

“They’re half mad with joy, ma’am. Especially! 
Herbert. He’s actually trying on British airs—him that’s, 
pretended to be a socialist. I overheard him talking to 
Collins. He was saying that his ‘Lordship’ would perhaps 

be going to England soon, and that his ‘Lordship’-” 

But Kathryn was no longer listening. Thought of Wan 
Sing had come to her. Wan Sing! 

Wan Sing was not—he was not- Oh, the dreadful 

things she had imagined about poor little Wan Sing! Wan 





a6o 


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Sing who had come to her on that first day in this house, 
with his offering—his little porcelain god! 

“Wan Sing!” she cried suddenly. “I must see Wan Sing!” 
And hurrying from the apartment she made her excited 
way up the broad stairs that led to the third floor, and down 
the long corridor to Wan Sing’s room. With an impatient 
\gesture she flung his door wide, then she stopped short with 
j'a little gasp. 

Kneeling before a small altar was a boy whose ultra 
American black leather oxfords, long stockings and perfectly 
tailored short trousers were contradicted and soberly 
challenged by a straight, wide-sleeved nankeen jacket. His 
figure was prostrated in an attitude of deepest humility, his 
forehead touching a prayer rug, his hands clasped behind 
him. 

Kathryn would have retreated but having apparently 
finished absolving his soul, the boy rose slowly to his feet. 

“Wan Sing!” Kathryn held out her arms to him. “Wan 
Singr 

The boy turned and looked at her with no evidence of 
surprise. There was a moment of silence, then: 

“Wan Sing catchem one note ’blout noon,” he said 
accusingly. “Messengel boy bling him. Wan Sing meetem 
outside, slign him name. Noblody see.” 

He took from inside his jacket a cheap oblong envelope, 
and watching Kathryn narrowly, he handed it to her with 
a stiff little bow. 

Curiously Kathryn slit the envelope with a tapering finger, 
and extracting therefrom a folded sheet of paper, scanned 
its few closely written words with tense application. 

“‘Slippery Charley’! Wan Sing! It’s from that dread¬ 
ful man who—who twice called me on the telephone, 
and-” 

“Yes?” invited the boy quietly. 

“He says that when first he talked with me, he—he called 

? r . . 


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261 


John Harrington yellow —meaning that he was a—was a 
coward . But upon learning that I had taken the word to 

mean something—quite different, he had—had- Oh, 

Wan Sing! He’s not all bad! No matter what he’s done, 
he can’t be all bad, when he—wanted to—to explain that 
word to me, before they sent him on his ‘journey up the 
river.’ Even he is not all selfish! I’m beginning to think, 
Wan Sing, that I’m less good than—than-” 

“If Mliss Hellington not good, Mliss Hellington can allee 
same die like me.” 

“Wan Sing!” Kathryn took a step toward the boy, who 
as quickly retreated. 

“Wan Sing no wan’a live,” he told her sorrowfully. 
Never could he face his master—that master who thought 
him guilty of treason, and never, of course, could he explain 
to his master that it was not he who was guilty. And—• 
did Mliss Hellington know that because he must die by his 
own hand, he would have very great difficulty in ascending 
the dragon? And could she understand- 

“Oh, my little boy! My little brave Wan Sing!” inter¬ 
rupted Kathryn brokenly. 

White-faced and trembling with awe before this child 
who would die to save her from jeopardy, die in such a 
manner that even the dragon up which he must climb to 
reach heaven, would frown upon him, Kathryn once more 
approached confession, and this time the words rushed to 
her lips unbidden, and clambered over each other in their 
haste to be spoken. And yet with what delicate, exquisite 
tact was the boy made to understand that a great chasm 
lay between the white and the yellow races, and that this 
chasm had made but natural the horror which she had felt 
when that word yellow had been applied to her husband. And 
with what feverish eagerness did the proud lady beg Wan 
Sing to forgive her! 

And once his master had said that the doll which looked 


262 


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like her might have been—a river girl of Shanghai. There 
was no telling just what river girls of Shanghai were like—- 
and Wan Sing shook his head uncertainly—but never could 
this lovely lady who belonged to his master, be like any¬ 
thing less beautiful than the saint in a chapel window, he 
determined doggedly. 

“And so, Wan Sing, Fm going away. He—he can get a 

divorce and—and be—happy with someone else. But you-- 

He knows that you are innocent. He—we talked about it 
all—last night. He understands. You’ll do nothing—bath 
Wan Sing?” 

“You go ’way?” the boy asked noncommittally. 

Kathryn’s eyes avoided his steady gaze. 

“It’s the only decent thing I can do, Wan Sing.” 

“You go ’cause stay here make you feel shame same like 
hell, yes?” he cross-examined imperturbably. “You not think 
maybe ’blout him!” 

Kathryn started guiltily. Was she after all, going away 
for no other reason than to save herself from humiliation? 
Was it possible that pride was sending her away now, only 
because it was loath to humble itself before the man upon 
whom she had heaped so many indignities? Could it be- 

“And me—Wan Sing! You not think ’blout me?” 

“But of course, Wan Sing! And I shall never forget 
you, and I shall pray to my Christian God for you, and you 
shall pray to your Buddha for me. You see, dear,” once 
again she was the musician, but not consciously did she 
make of her voice seductive music, nor intentionally did her 
silken lashes half-veil the velvet blue of her eyes, “you came 
into my heart that first day, down there in my room, and 
though I’ve tried to put you out, I’ve failed completely. 
And when I’ve gone-” 

“And me,” again inquired the boy, faint craftiness in his 
narrow slant eyes, “you no care allee same ’nough?” 

“Oh, I do care. I do. But I can’t stay here. You don’t 




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understand. It would be too humiliating! Too unbear¬ 
able.” She made the acknowledgment defiantly. 

Wan Sing sighed. Then craftily: 

'‘You no takee Wan Sing ’long, him die. Him catchem 
one blig knife Horn klitchen—-” 

Kathryn stared down at the slight, half-grown figure with 
its solemn ivory face, a warm gladness surprising her heavy 
heart. 

“You can’t mean-” she began in a sort of whisper, 

“you can’t mean that you-” 

“Me go ’long all time take one velly good care of you. 
You no let me go-” he shrugged his thin little shoulders. 

“Wan Sing! Wan Sing! If only I thought he could 
get on without you!” 

“Him!” The boy made a scornful gesture. “Him blig 
man, him not need noblody. Him like me go ’long take 
one velly fine watch of you. Can see? Yes?” And in his 
generous, self-sacrificing heart was the wonder if going away 
with this woman whom his master loved, watching over her, 
guarding her from evil, with perhaps never again to have 
in his ears the sound of that beloved master’s voice, would 
be sufficient atonement for whatever troubles he had brought 
to his very grand man. 

“Him be much glad me not let you go by youself same 
like alone. You not can undelstan’?” 

A choking sound escaped Kathryn’s parted lips, and the 
tears that had been brooding in her eyes made glistening 
wet streaks down her cheeks. 

“Wan Sing! Wan Sing!” 

Her pale face leaned toward him, her two slim arms 
stretched out to him, her voice had in it the half-wistful* 
half-glad cry of surrender. 

Wan Sing hadn’t counted on anything beyond a dignified 
guardianship, for there was still in his heart a remnant of 
bitterness for the woman who could thus run away from 



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*64 

his master, but the tear-dimmed blue eyes, the trembling 
mouth that called his name, and the voice that was so like 

a silver flute in its wistfulness- They were more than 

ordinary boy could stand, and without in the least intending 
to do so, Wan Sing walked straight into the open arms. 



CHAPTER XXIII 


A FTER a full confession had been wrung from Slippery 
Charley, Cyril McLennon’s release from custody had 
been effected, and the swarm of newspaper reporters 
had rushed excitedly off to editorial rooms, John Harrington 
had still many things to do. There were cables to be sent 
off to his solicitors in England and telegrams to be sent to 
certain men in Washington. There were several important 
matters awaiting his attention at his downtown offices and 
there was a directors’ meeting scheduled for four o’clock at his 
toy factory. Then there was an appointment with the Chief 
of Police, and a talk to be had with the Chinese Consul. 

It was midnight when he let himself in through the high 
carved doors of his great silent house. 

When he had reached the narrow hall which led to his 
private quarters, he entered it and closing the door softly 
behind him, strode swiftly along to the heavily embroidered 
satin hanging and with a quick gesture thrust it aside. He 
switched on the electric lights and stood in the aperture, 
glancing curiously around the room, recalling the scene that 
had been enacted there twenty-four hours before. So much 
had happened then! So much had happened since! 

His gaze came finally to the ebony chair where it held 
gravely, seeing there again a proud young empress whose 
eyes were as cold and hard as the lapis lazuli from which 
they took their color, whose mouth had once touched his, 

whose golden hair his breath had stirred- 

“You’re the victor!” he said with a twisted smile, as he 
bowed mockingly before the imaginary throne. “And to 

*65 



266 


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the victor goes the spoils. I’d hoped to make you want me 
for myself, but to your haughty Highness if a man be not a 
king he is a serf, and if he be a king without a kingdom 
he is but a man. I would have been proud had you thought 
me a man , but inasmuch as I was not a king and could not 
therefore be a man, I was but a serf whose tax paid for 
your baubles. I wanted love and you gave me scorn, so, 
fool that I am,” he laughed a short silken laugh, ”1 don my 
abandoned crown, cause to be published an inventory of 
my possessions and the history of my kingdom, that I may 
lure smiles from your arrogant lips.” 

He tossed his stick and hat on to the heap of rugs in the 
corner and fell to pacing the floor with quick nervous steps 
that were quite unlike his usual long swinging stride. A 
dozen times he drew out his watch and glanced impatiently 
at its lazy hands. A score of times he paused beside the 
little mother-of-pearl casket wherein lay a dead geranium 
blossom, only to frown and resume his pacing. Now and 
again in passing, he would let the tips of his long fingers 
slide caressingly along the carved arm of the ebony chair. 
And once or twice he whispered: “Plum-Blossom! Proud 
little Plum-Blossom!” 

And then it was morning and he was at his wife’s door, 
wondering at the dead silence that answered his repeated 
rappings. And a moment later he was opening the door and 
stepping apologetically into the dainty boudoir. 

The room was empty! The bed had not been occupied! 

“Kathryn!” he called softly. 

But even as he spoke her name premonition settled heavily 
upon him. There was an odd finality to the room’s empti- t 
ness, strange abandonment in its disorder. Long mirrored 
doors hung open displaying gorgeous gowns in deep ward¬ 
robes beyond. A velvet wrap made a crimson splash against 
the silken cover of the bed. A filmy mass of chiffon and lace 
lay crumpled and cynical over the back of a chair. A slim 


THE AUTOCRAT 267 

high heel slipper of shell pink satin peered out at him from 
beneath a night stand. 

Life had been here—swift mad life! That cloak—she 
had worn it to a dance! That lace and chiffon thing had 
known the warmth of her smooth young body! This slipper 
here had danced lightly as thistledown—danced in close 
intimacy with the patent leather pumps of admiring men! 

He picked up the pink satin slipper and examined it 
tenderly. There was the imprint of the little toes. There 
the creases where the foot had bent in walking. And how 
ridiculously small it was! He thrust two fingers into it 
and found there was not room for a third. He had not 
known that a woman’s foot could be naturally so small. 
But then everything about her was delicate and fine. He 
remembered how slender her throat had looked the other 
night against the pile of little pillows on her chaise longue . 
He saw again the narrow hands as they had plucked 
nervously at her diaphanous covering of chiffons! And the 
thinly veiled, girlishly rounded breasts- 

A dull flush clouded the ivory of his skin, his eyes 
narrowed and his thin nostrils quivered. With a sharp 
intake of his breath he flung the slipper from him and quit 
the room with no slightest backward glance. 

When he had had his bath and had made a hasty toilet, 
he descended to the dining-room where an uneasy, self-con¬ 
scious Herbert watched him furtively, anxiously, pityingly, 
as he took up the note with which the butler had topped 
his morning mail, and broke the seal. 

“Mrs. Harrington gave you this?” he asked quietly when 
ke had finished reading it. 

“Her ladyship delivered it to me through Lucy.” 

At another time John Harrington would have smiled at 
Herbert’s use of the word ladyship, but just now he was 
numbed with shock, conscious only of the fact that his 
empress had disdained her victory—that once more he had 
been robbed by the Lambert pride. 



268 


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What an inconsistent thing it was—this Lambert pride, 
he thought. It sold its women to the highest bidders with¬ 
out qualm, abetted them in their haughty intolerance of 
their purchasers, and smiled indulgently at their Shylock 
methods of collecting what they chose to consider their due. 
But when a purchaser made no effort to retain his pound of 
flesh, and to prove his generosity, offered to strip his bones 
for favor, this Lambert pride frowned in righteous indigna¬ 
tion. How dare the purchaser think that the purchased 
would accept from him more than the stipulated price! How 
dare he offer such humiliation! 

And she had believed him to be— yellow! It was small 
wonder that she had cried out against the blood which he 
had given to her! Poor little Plum-Blossom! How easily 
Slippery Charley had bruised her! How intensely she must 
have suffered! How bitter must have been her memories 
of that first night up there in that room which he had so 
joyfully prepared for her! How the ghosts of his kisses must 
have terrified her! Perhaps she’d been torn, too, between 
her reluctance to remain under his roof and her fear to 
face the world alone and penniless. And penniless she 
would have been had she gone from him, for true to her 
queer, inconsistent standards, she would have accepted no 
more from him then, than she would accept from him now, 
and she had made it plain in her note that she wanted noth¬ 
ing except privacy—the privilege of finishing alone her much 
scarred destiny. 

Alone! That word eliminated—J. Gordon Bradlie 
Junior! It eliminated that young Irish sculptor! It left 
behind her all those other poachers whom she had wantonly 
lured across the boundary of his preserve! She had deserted 
him, but so too, had she deserted all those others! She 
had gone alone to finish out her “scarred destiny”! He 
sighed and his dark eyes moved slowly round the great room 
that was never again to be glorified by her presence! 

“Had you been a hybrid of America, the great leveler of 


THE AUTOCRAT 


269 


caste,” she had written, “I could have asked you with dignity, 
and expected you quite as a matter of course, to forgive me. 
But the high position which you have just acknowledged, 
claimed and renounced, fills me with a sense of my own 
humble inferiority. I have been so boastful about my breed¬ 
ing, and now as I recall what once you said to me—‘good 

breeding needs no advertising’-, I burn with shame. I 

want to hide—to crawl into some hole where I can get used 
to my unimportance—my humbleness. Conceit cannot sur¬ 
vive ridiculousness, and the vanity that was I, is, I think, 
dead. 

“The other and no less rigid reason for my going away 
from you, is the fact that already I had planned to leave 
John Harrington! How then, could I decently stay on, 
when it is announced suddenly that John Harrington was 
born a British peer!” 

Dear, inconsistent little Plum-Blossom! In one line her 
pride was quite dead from ridiculousness! In the line 
immediately following, it rose majestically—very much alive 
—and crossed swords with desire. Not that she had desired 

to remain with him, but to remain as the wife of an earl-- 

Ah! What a temptation it must have been! 

He smiled sardonically. 

More credit to her pride! For once it had turned its 
back upon a flattering price. It had withdrawn her from 
the sale! What irony that he should have raised his own 
bid, too! That he should have offered more than the price 
expected, thereby causing the jealousy of pride to thwart the 
purchase . . . Had she loved him—love would have argued 
against and conquered all other emotions. But she had not 
loved him. In that she had been honest with him. He 
recalled her candor that day in the chop house. She had 
made no pretense of love. She had made small effort to 
disguise the fact that she was selfish—mercenary. She had 
called herself “sheerest froth”—an “as is.” And he had been 
glad to have her even as such. And now—she had gone from 


THE AUTOCRAT 


270 

him. Gone out of his life as completely as if she had never 
been in it . . . No. Not quite as completely as that. 
Always he would have memories of her as she had been 
that first day—that first night—as he knew she might for¬ 
ever have been if love had come to her. Always there would 
be on his lips the warm feel of hers. Always in his nos¬ 
trils the strange exotic perfume of her hair. And always 
there would be a dried red geranium in a mother-of-pearl 
casket. 

So little she had left to him! So brief a time she had 
belonged to him! And how hungry he had been for her 
during these months when she had been but an arm’s length 
away! How imperiously she had withdrawn herself from 
him! How patiently he had gone on hoping! And now she 
■was gone! She had written finis under his hopes, for never 
would her indomitable pride permit her to return to him. 
Never again would he feel the touch of her lips against his, 
inhale the perfume of her hair. He would write to her. He 
would tell her how foolish that pride was, and he would 
ask her to let him come for her. But she would not answer 
bis letters—he was certain of that. And then—after awhile 
—he would arrange for her some sort of trust fund. Though 
he was equally sure that she would ignore this, too. She 
bad gone to the Lambert place in Virginia. It was all that 
remained of a vast estate—a rambling old house and an 
acre or two—and there was no doubt but that she had gone 
straight there. The pride which governed her life would 
forbid that she return to the home of her uncle. Poor 
martyred Plum-Blossom! Poor little girl who might have 
been such a splendid woman—such a glorious— mother! 

The straight black lashes wavered over the dark slant 
eyes for an instant, then they lifted and the eyes turned 
compellingly toward the motionless Herbert. 

“Lucy! She must have—told you something. Something 
of the plans of her mistress.” 


THE AUTOCRAT 


271 


The butler moistened his lips. He dared not lie to this 
man whose eyes seemed to be looking into his brain. Yet 
how would he dare to tell him the truth? 

“Yes, your lordship.” 

“We will dispense with the title, if you don’t mind.” 

Herbert murmured an apology and fumbled with the silver 
coffee percolator, but the inscrutable eyes fixed upon his face 
were demanding words . He had read newspaper comments 
on the power of John Harrington’s immobile silence. He 
understood now what the newspaper writers had meant. 
Those dark brilliant eyes would not be denied. He felt 
the uselessness of trying to resist them. 

“Her ladyship—I beg your pardon—Mrs. Harrington— 
seemed obsessed, if I may repeat Lucy’s words, sir, with the 
idea of getting to Virginia where ‘the horses are fast and 
the hurdles high,’ whatever she meant by that, sir.” 

Where the horses are fast and the hurdles high! Where 
her mother’s unborn infants had been sacrificed to the hunt! 
Wasn’t it common gossip! Didn’t every one know it! 
Hadn’t Estelle Van Kemp told the shameful story often 
enough! . . . How well he knew what had been in the 
mind of his mad little Plum-Blossom, when she had told 
Lucy that she wanted to go where the horses were fast and 
the hurdles high! 

And there was nothing he could do to—save her from 
herself! Nothing he could do to prevent the crime which 
she was about to commit. 

For the first time in his life he found himself impotent 
against an opposing power. His bribe had been ignored. 
And he had no weapons. 

“And she told me, sir,” Herbert continued, forced by 
the dark eyes to go on, “that Wan Sing insisted upon 
accompanying them, and that—Mrs. Harrington had finally 
agreed to take him along, meaning to send him back to you 
in a week or two. She told Lucy that after all, she was 


THE AUTOCRAT 


* 7 * 

only borrowing him from you for a little while, and that 
she was sure you’d not mind if—if you knew how very much 
she needed him. Naturally, Chloe went with her, too. And 
though she’d told Lucy she couldn’t pay her—I beg your 
pardon, sir, for knowing the details, but-” 

“That’s all right, Herbert. You—probably saw ft com¬ 
ing anyway, and you would have averted it if you could. 
It—was inevitable.” 

Again John Harrington’s gaze wandered round the great 
room, and his thin lips curved to the shadow of a smile. She 
had left behind her such a ghastly void. The place had be¬ 
come a mausoleum. Herbert’s voice sounded like a shout in a 
spacious, high-vaulted tomb, and when it stopped the silence 
that followed chilled one’s bones. Gone was the swishing 
sound of lace and crisp organdie and the sharp click of tiny 
French heels. Gone the soft pad of shy, tentative feet 
and the sibilant boyish whisper begging leave to perform some 
superfluous service. Stilled was the volcanic chuckles that 
were wont to come in from the kitchen with the swinging 
pf the pantry door, and no longer did a fat old negress hum 
to herself out there the lullabies that once she had sung to 
an adored little missie. 

His smile went a little crooked. With what ease Kath¬ 
ryn Lambert made people love her! She was tyrannical, 
selfish. Yet her very tyranny fascinated. Her very selfish¬ 
ness won indulgence. There was Wan Sing and his shat¬ 
tered porcelain god! She had torn the little fellow’s 
soul to shreds! Yet Wan Sing loved her reverently. Had 
gone away with her! 

He could not help wondering if she would shatter Wan 
Sing as she had shattered his god. If she would drive him 
peremptorily toward new faiths which he could not compre¬ 
hend. Destroy under him his foundation of honesty, and 
build up in him an imagined need of hypocrisy. Wan Sing 


THE AUTOCRAT 


273 


would give and she would take, and one day having gone 
empty of interest, Wan Sing would have no more to give, 
and she would toss him aside as she would toss aside an old 
glove or a jaded hat. He was divertisement now, was his little 
Pekinese—a necessary bit of amusement in a moment of 
tragedy, but the moment of tragedy would pass and the 
divertisement, become less necessary, would be frowned upon 
disdainfully. The boy with two gods would grow into a 
cynic with none. 

It was not a pleasant thing to contemplate and yet John 
Harrington was not sorry that Wan Sing had gone away 
with the woman he loved. If the boy could lessen ever so 
little the poignance of that moment of tragedy—well, cynics 
had sometimes come back to their earliest faiths, and he 
would himself see to it that Wan Sing would not long 
remain shattered. Wan Sing he could handle. He was 
impotent only where she was concerned. She and his own 
traitorous heart. 

Wan Sing would write to him, but he would not mention 
his lady. She would forbid him to write about her. And 
then one day—Wan Sing would come back, and after that 
there would be evenings upstairs when Wan Sing would 
brew tea and—talk to him—of her . Meantime, there must 
be the least possible gossip. She would be wanting to return 
some day to New York, and he must do now all that lay 
in his power to save her from future embarrassment. 

“The rest of the servants-” he inquired, turning his 

ivory face to Herbert, “they know what has happened ?” 

The butler shook his head proudly. 

“I—thought it unnecessary, sir, that the—the details be 
broadcast. Lucy agreed with me. The rest of the servants 
believe Mrs. Harrington has gone away on a visit. And 
really, sir,” his sallow face brightened, “she’ll not stay away 
long, begging your-” 



274 


THE AUTOCRAT 


“You’re wrong, Herbert,” Harrington rose to his feet, 
and with one colorless hand holding to the carved back of 
his chair, he looked across the table at his butler, with eye* 
that for once were dark pools of seething emotion. “Mrs* 
Harrington will never come back!” 


CHAPTER XXIV 


*T^ROM some remote part of the rambling old Lambert 
house in Virginia, came the muffled sound of a clock 
striking four. The horizon at the east was rouged 
with faint streaks of red. Beyond the ivy-framed windows 
of Kathryn Harrington’s wide low-ceilinged room on the 
second floor, a pine tree was thrusting its sharp black needles 
into the sky’s delicate flush, and sparrows were stretching 
their little wings and breaking the soft hush of dawn with 
occasional sleepy twitterings. 

Kathryn moved an aching arm cautiously, but her caution 
was futile. Wan Sing’s eyes flew open. 

“You no been asleep?” the boy asked, blinking up at her 
from where he sat on a low hassock at her feet. “Me 
solly!” 

Kathryn smiled down at him, as she lifted the arm against 
which his small head had rested through the long night. 

“I think I slept a little. There was a moment when you 
and I and—and somebody else sat in a beautiful garden 
that was fragrant with plum-blossoms, listening to the boom 
of some distant bell-” 

“The joss temple,” murmured Wan Sing drowsily. 

“Perhaps. And then there was the striking of a clock, 
and immediately I was here in this deep chair in which my 
mother used to sit, and you were there at my feet, with 
your head against my knees, my arms numbly encircling 
you. And then came memory of yesterday and of the 
day before with its long night of travel—with you and Lucy 
and Chloe and me coming away into—exile together. It’s 
275 



276 


THE AUTOCRAT 


been wonderful—this finding real love for me in the hearts 
of three people. Chloe—would come with me, of course. 
I took for granted her desire to be with me. But you, 
Wan Sing! I’d treated you so cruelly! And Lucy! When 
she too, insisted upon coming! Ah, I shall never learn to 
be good with the three of you to go on spoiling me!” 

Kathryn slid her arm once more round the boy’s narrow 
shoulders. The numbness at her elbow was giving way to 
little shooting pains and she smiled at them as though they 
gave her a sort of savage joy. The feel of the half-grown 
body against her arm, stirred something in her heart—some¬ 
thing she had not guessed was there—something she had not 
experienced since as a little girl she had stopped mothering 
dolls. She caught one of the small yellowish hands and held 
it as if she wanted never to let it go again. And Wan Sing 
snuggled closer and sighed contentedly. His face shone like 
polished brass in the dawn’s faint light and his adoring eyes 
were bright with the unspoken joy that was in his pagan 
soul. 

“You be slick to-mollow—mean to-day. Mistel Helling- 
ton him no like Wan Sing let you stlay up allee night.” 
He shook his dark head dubiously. 

“I don’t think he would care. I—I think he came to 
hate me toward the end, Wan Sing. That last night—I 
think he could have killed me with infinite relish. I 

wonder-” she looked out through the open window to 

where the sky was flushed like the cheek of a child just 
awakened from sleep, “if he slept last night—and—and the 
night before.” 

“You leave one note in him loom?” the boy inquired 
thoughtfully. 

“I left one with Herbert. I—told him about the—the 
yellow, Wan Sing. And I told him that he could prove his 
forgiveness by making no effort to see me-—ever again. I— 
couldn’t bear to see him, now. I’d die of shame. And 
he-” 



THE AUTOCRAT 


277 

“He lead one note,” mused the boy quietly, “then him 
go stlay allee night by factly.” 

“The factory!” 

“Him glot one blig loom at factly. Him lotta time sleep 
by factly when him no can be happy by home.” 

Immediately the last sentence had slipped out, Wan Sing 
was sorry, but shrewdly he guessed that any attempt to 
change it would make it worse. 

“So that is the answer to his nocturnal absences!” Kath¬ 
ryn flushed. She might have known. Yet she had suspected 
him—believed that he—that he was guilty of- 

She closed her eyes and a tremor ran over her slender 
body. The boy looked at her compassionately and patted 
her hand reassuringly. 

“Blime by him come—evelthing be allee light.” 

“No. He will not come, Wan Sing. And if he did I 
would not see him. I want—never to see him, again. Never 
again !” 

And another silence fell between the beautiful girl whose 
face was framed in a glorious golden aureole, and the small 
Celestial into whose eyes the fog of sleep was once more 
gathering. 

The dawn matured into a day of ultramarine blue, warm 
gold, the cool shade of wide green trees, rediscovered long 
forgotten nooks, a brook that years ago had pompously 
promised to grow into a river and was still a brook, an attic 
in which a saddle and a pair of small riding boots were gray 
with mold and dust, shining black faces wreathed in wel¬ 
coming smiles, white hands of neighbors that gripped one’s 
own affectionately, spacious colonial houses, shambling, white¬ 
washed cabins, and wide open flood-gates of memory. 

“She ain’t yet got no laff in huh bressed eyes,” Chloe 
complained to Lucy as after dinner they worked together 
straightening the wide old-fashioned dining room. “But 
all day she been like a chile, mah missie, an’ Ah knows she 
gwine sleep like a baby.” 


278 


THE AUTOCRAT 


Lucy nodded her head. 

“She’s remembering things—that are good to remember,’* 
she said thoughtfully, “and she’s forgetting things that are 
better forgotten. I don’t think,” she touched a wondering 
finger to an old pewter mug, “that she’s thought about her¬ 
self—much—to-day. About others, perhaps, but not about 
herself. And I think Wan Sing has done as much as her 
surroundings toward lifting her out of—deep brooding and 
morbid introspection. He seems to have some subtle in¬ 
fluence over her, and she-” 

“Isn’t Ah seed it! Wif mah own two eyes! Hit am 
mesmrism. Yassum! An’ mah li’l missie-” 

“No, it isn’t mesmerism, Chloe. It’s philosophy . He’s 
full of it, and she’s been starving for it, though she didn’t 
know it. When one has neither a God nor a philosophy-” 

“Huh! Isn’t she got one of them fat-bellied gods a 
settin’ up-staihs on ’at little table by de bed, dis ver’ minute! 
Ah asks yuh! Isn’t she? Dat Chinkboy gwine make mah 
missie a lady heathen. Spect any time she’ll be a wantin’ me 
tuh cook a mishnary!” Chloe snatched up a rumpled nap¬ 
kin. 

Lucy shook her head and laughed softly. Her eyes turned 
to the long open window through which came a thin, high- 
pitched voice that was chanting into music some ancient 
truth. 

“She’s needed what he can give her. But she wouldn’t 
have accepted it from anyone else. Her dignity does not 
rebel against being preached to by a child.” She smiled 
toward the moonlit garden. “And ‘a little child shall lead 
them,’ ” she said, unconscious of Chloe’s grunt of disapproval. 

And outside in a maze of over-grown boxwood, a little 
Chinaboy was salving with the philosophies handed down to 
him through the ages, a scorched human heart. The patina 
of an inbred aristocracy was disappearing as though his 
words were a polishing buffer. The glaze of autocracy was 
melting beneath the warmth of his passionate desire to make 




THE AUTOCRAT 


279 


his beloved lady see . Her intolerance had splintered and 
broke under the weight of his worship. Through the 
acrid sweetness of bitter truths spoken in a spirit of love 
and tenderness, a new Kathryn was being fused. 

And so the night grew deep. And the morning came 
bringing at its heels another day of blue and gold and the 
shade of trees, of rediscovered things long forgotten, of 
rejuvenating memories, of softening reminiscences, and 
against it all, etched in color and sound—a thin, high-pitched 
voice and a pair of slant eyes that looked so like another 
pair of eyes, and Confucius, and Gotama Buddha, and the 
Son of the White man’s God. 

Came more days until the days had made a week. And 
the week grew into several and made a month. And Chloe 
had to acknowledge to Lucy that Wan Sing was creating 
a new Kathryn, though she could not in the least understand 
how a Chinkboy’s “fat bellied” Buddha had managed to con¬ 
vert her missie to Christianity, It was a mystery that would 
puzzle Chloe all the days of her life. But color—the soft 
creamy pink of a peach—was coming back again to her missie’s 
cheeks, and because of that Chloe could almost forgive Wan 
Sing his race. She forgot to sneer at his treasured cup of iao 
jade and even his transplanted prayer rug she handled with un¬ 
willing reverence—a sort of awe in her old heart for any¬ 
thing which had to do with the profane thing that grinned 
at her from his improvised altar. She was vaguely super¬ 
stitious of everything she touched in Wan Sing’s room. And 
once or twice she made a thorough search for the charm 
which she knew he must possess. Fortune tellers sold them. 
She had bought several herself. But for some reason or an¬ 
other they had not worked. So Wan Sing’s power remained 
one of Chloe’s many wonders. For how could the simple 
old soul understand that Buddha’s four sublime truths: Life 
is sorrow; the cause of suffering is desire; conquest of self 
means freedom from desire; right living is right thinking 
and right acting —had plumbed Kathryn Lambert’s need. 


THE AUTOCRAT 


*80 

In these days of her soul’s adolescence, Kathryn’s con¬ 
science flogged her maliciously, but she had only to summon 
Wan Sing to be at peace with herself. His imperturbable 
calm enveloped her like a magic garment. It transported her 
to a quiet garden behind the many eaved house where once 
had lived a great Manchu and a dearly beloved master. 

She sat often with him in the mellow dusk, listening to 
the imagined silvery tinkle of pagoda bells. Through his 
half-remembered, half-borrowed reminiscences, she would 
inhale the scent of lotus blossoms borne to them on fancied 
spring breezes. And sometimes when they had become drunk 
with these imagined memories, they would wind their way 
through the tangle of boxwood, clinging hand to hand, and 
go blinking into the house and on up to Wan Sing’s room, 
where she would light his Hung Shu incense sticks and say 
with him strange prayers worthy of a joss temple. And he 
would read the Psalms with her and sing in his thin falsetto 
voice, 1 Need Thee Every Hour . 

Once she caught him to her with inarticulate, convulsive 
arms, and after a tense moment, cried out in the archaic, 
exquisite phraseology of China: 

“Oh, little boy cut from the golden tapestry of which he 
is made, I had thought God created me for the bright, glit¬ 
tering jewels of life and—He made me- Oh, little 

golden boy! I find that He made me for Love!” 

“Ah hyee! Ah hyee! Ahi!” Wan Sing’s small face 
glowed. “Then pelhaps maybe we go now tell to him. Ah 
hyee! Pelhaps, yes, we go light away?” 

But Kathryn shook her beautiful head, and a cloud som- 
bered the blue of her eyes. 

“No, little friend. I can’t go. I—I think-” 

“Plide?” inquired the boy solicitously. 

“Still pride, Wan Sing.” 

“Plide velly bad.” 

“I know, dear. But-” 

“You wan’a be unhappy, Buddha him say, ‘velly well,’ ” 



THE AUTOCRAT 


2&X 

this with what was meant to be Buddha’s shrug. “You 
make evelblody else unhappy, Buddha say, ‘Shame! Veil* 
bad!’” 

Kathryn sat quite still for a long while, brooding over 
this. 

What if Buddha were right—and she had found him sur¬ 
prisingly right in so many things!—and she was committing 
further wrong where already she had been so unjust! What 
if Buddha should demand that she return to the man she 
had wronged and allow him to pass judgment upon her! 
And what would be the sentence of that strange man who 
had broken a trust! Whose passion for justice might de¬ 
mand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth! 

She shivered, and sank farther back into the deep veranda 
seat from which she and Wan Sing had been watching the 
fireflies winking their lights on and off above the boxwood 
garden. 

“I’m cold, Wan Sing,” she complained querulously, like 
a child half-reproachfully demanding attention from its 
nurse. 

“Me—one time me tellee Mistel Hellington one lie— 
not velly blig lie—just lie, Me tly make me feel allee light 
—make lotta excuse to inside of Wan Sing. But inside of 
Wan Sing fulla much shame, and Wan Sing feel velly cold. 
Me undelstan’.” 

Kathryn started. It was almost uncanny—this strange 
wisdom in a half-grown pagan. Veil herself from herself 
as she would, never did it seem, could she veil herself from 
him and his queer diagnosing. She pressed the half-matured 
fingers that had reached for hers, and drew closer to the 
small head that she knew would come in a little while, to 
lean drowsily against her shoulder. 

“Yes,” she said simply. “I think you do—understand. 
Wan Sing.” Then a little sharply: “But long, long be¬ 
fore your Gotama founded Buddhism, nature made self- 


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preservation its first law. That law was instinct and all 
animals lived by it, and never was it disputed-” 

“But Buddha—him make law flo’ men—like me, and 
womans like you. He say conques’ of self-” 

“Yes, I know. Conquest of self means freedom from 
desire!” 

“And Chlist too! He not make law flo’ an’mals. He 
make same like Buddha!” 

“I see,” mused Kathryn, compelled after a tense moment, 
to honest self-examination. “And I’ve ignored the laws of 
men and—lived by the laws of beasts. I wonder what my 
life would have been-” 

“Yo’ alls isn’t gwine have no life, honey, no life a tall, 
lessen yo’ alls knows yo’se’f when yo’ is cold, ’thout lettin’ 
some un ’at don’ know nothin’ ’bout it, tell yuh ’at yo’ 
xsn t! 

A massive black hulk loomed in silhouette against the 
wide double screen doors that opened upon the veranda, 
cutting off the broad shaft of light that had streamed from 
the living room beyond. 

“Yo’ alls say yo’ cold. Ah say to Lucy, Ah say, ‘Dat 
One Sing he sho’ gwine go off an’ tote out de wrong 

shawl.’ An’ Ah was dess sayin’-•” the hinges of the screen 

door creaked and the black hulk, weaving back and forth 
against the broad splash of light, grew steadily larger as it 
approached the deep seat that was wrapped in darkness, “Ah 
say, ‘When he come in nat do’, Ah’ll tell him ’at de white 
wool shawl is de bestes.’ An’ Lucy she shake huh haid 
an’ say, she say ’at One Sing know ’at yo’ alls is cold some 
funny-how an’ nat they isn’t no way to make yuh wahm 
*cept dess if he put suthin’ in yo’ alls heart. But Ah reckons 
if my missie say she cold, Ah isn’t gwine sit still an’ let no 
Chink put no hypoderrick in her, dess to ’speriment.” 

The swaying silhouette paused beside the veranda seat and 
made an emphatic gesture which left a soft warm shawl 
around Kathryn’s bare shoulders. 





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“Thanks, Chloe.” Kathryn leaned a cool cheek against 
an ample hip of the great black hulk, and under cover of 
the darkness caressed reassuringly the small boyish hand 
that lay in her lap. 

“Is ’at better, honey? Eon’ yo’ alls ’low nobody to use 
no hypoderrick on yuh fo nothin no time. They yoosta 
jab a hypoderrick in Mis’ Lambut’s ahm ’at time yo’ was 
borned, an’ mah marsah done put a stop to hit. He say 
’tain’t good nohow.’’ 

“But sometimes, mammy, a hypodermic can deaden an 
intolerable pain.” 

“Ain’t no kine a pain intol’able, ’ceptin’ to folks who no 
’count.” 

A warm broad palm held Kathryn’s head close, and fat, 
gentle fingers smoothed the soft windblown hair. 

“Mliss Hellington cold inside,” ventured Wan Sing. “No 
can lap up inside with shawl.” 

“Sho’ she cold inside! Dess like as not she done caught 
de grip, a settin’ out heah ever’ night wif a bamboo breeze 
a blowin’ on de sampans, wha’ever they is. Isn’t Ah heerd 
yo’ alls talkin’ ’bout it?” Chloe snorted. “Huh!” 

A short stubby hand and a tapering narrow one, pressed 
each other convulsively in Kathryn’s lap, as though they 
were laughing together. But Kathryn’s voice was sweetly 
serious as she sent the old negress on her way. 

“It is the bamboo breeze, mammy! It’s sort of getting 
under my artificial wrappings. But I am probably less sick s , 
than ever I was in my life. The shawl, though! I’m 
glad you brought it, mammy dear, because when you’ve gone 
in the house, Wan Sing will take me down to the edge of 
the river where I can watch the sampans drift by, and where 
the boom of some old temple bell will muffle the sounds that 
are in my heart. Goodnight, mammy! I’ll be wanting a 
bowl of litchi in the morning. No longer am I a lotus- 
eater.” 

“To de ejj of de river!” muttered Chloe as she moved 


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ponderously off toward the door. “Ain’t no river an’ ain’t 
no sampans, wha’ever they is, roun’ here nowhar. An’ she 
say she’ll be wantin’ litchi! Chink talk, dass what! Chink 
talk! Litchi! . . . Wha’ fo’ mah missie say she ain’t no 
mo’ no lotus eater. We alls isn’t nevah had no lotus 
things-” 

The screen doors creaked shut behind her, and immediately 
Wan Sing led Kathryn off to the brink of a murmuring 
river, though the rising moon still smiled down upon a boy 
and a woman who had not moved from their deep veranda 
seat. 

Weeping willows leaned over the river’s bank and dipped 
their frail green laces in waters rippled by a lazily moving 
sampan. From behind the willows came the rasping of 
bamboo leaves and the faint, unfamiliar song of some strange 
bird. Came a swarm of sampans to join the lazy one, and 
together they floated by like a miniature city under sail. 

And then Wan Sing led the way to a wonderful house 
with tiptilted eaves, beyond which they found a picture¬ 
like courtyard, softly carpeted with windblown blooms from 
a beloved plum tree and pathed with smooth white pebbles 
between rows of larkspur. And there was a moss bound 
little pool in which gold fishes were but glinting flashes in 
the sun. There were humming birds, too, that drank from 
the heart of the larkspur. And from some far place came 
the silvery, wistful call of a flute. 



CHAPTER XXV 


T HOUGHTFULLY John Harrington shut down the 
lid of a little mother-of-pearl casket and rose to his 
feet. He looked at the casket a little wistfully as 
he set it back in its accustomed place on the deep sandalwood 
altar. Then his lips compressed into a stern, straight line, 
and he turned away to a flat-topped table of teak on which 
lay two strapped traveling bags, a light top coat, his hat and 
stick. He stared down at the bags with brooding eyes that 
looked as if in the dark they might be phosphorescent, then 
his gaze came slowly round to a carved ebony chair that set 
at the other end of the room. Suddenly he clapped his 
hands as he had used to do to summon Wan Sing, and 
Herbert entered the room through a small door at the left. 

“There’s nothing more, I think, Herbert. Everything has 
been arranged.” He picked up his hat and stick. “Mrs. 
Collins and you will stay on here. The rest of the servants 
will receive from my office, salary for three months and 

written recommendations. I should like you-” he turned 

his eyes away from Herbert’s grieved gaze—“to keep the 
house,” he went on, “in readiness for—for any unexpected 
guest. If Mrs. Harrington should—come during my trip 
to China, you are to—cable me at once, and you will of 
course make her—welcome.” 

Herbert’s face brightened. 

“Then you think”—he began eagerly. 

“I think that she will not come. Now or ever! I merely 
arrange for the—improbable.” 

285 


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Herbert bowed his head gravely. 

“There’s nothing more, I believe.” John Harrington put 
out his hand and Herbert took it self-consciously, em- 
barrassedly. “You understand about the bags. You will 
give them to Peter in the morning, and he will take them 
down to the steamer.” 

Their hands fell apart and the master of the house turned 
toward the door of his strange chamber. At its threshold 
he paused and without looking round, he said: 

“Wan Sing might come. If he does, he’ll be needing me. 
You’re to cable. He’s to have this room. And though 
you’ll not succeed, you’re to do your best to—make him 
happy . . . That’s all.” 

The heavy door curtains fell together behind the tall 
straight figure in grayish tweeds, and the butler’s throat 
moved convulsively and his eyes fogged disconcertingly. 

“It’s been a hell of a month for him!” he muttered 
huskily. “Trying to keep his head in politics—because no 
matter what happens to him, he’s no quitter—while his heart 
is breaking under the feet of a lovely lady in Virginia who 
doesn’t even bother to kick it out of her way. Just ignores 
it. Won’t answer his letters, nor allow the little Chink 
when he writes, to say anything about her. If she’d do the 
right thing, she’d come up here and have it out with him. 
She could make him want her less. But this throwing up 
the whole game and going off down there like that . . . 
And him asking me every night if there’s any ‘news’! 

“Not a letter! Not one line since she left! It isn’t any 
wonder he can stand it no longer. He ought to have gone 
down there and made her come back. But he doesn’t want 
her now, unless she wants him, if I’m any judge. He 
wouldn’t have her here, if being here would make her un¬ 
happy. No. He wants her to do the thing that—that she 
wants most to do, even if it is breaking the heart of him— 
driving him off to the land of heathens.” Herbert looked 


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round at the two bags for corroboration. “Maybe,” he con¬ 
fided hopefully, “the change will help him, and he can 
come back to the mayor business with the old fierce gentle¬ 
ness, that could defeat anything that fought him. Maybe 
he will. Maybe!” 

Peter, sitting on the front seat of the Harrington limousine, 
was thinking very much the same thing, as he drove John 
Harrington down to his toy factory, and when at a side 
door of the plant, John Harrington stepped out of the car 
and turned to say goodbye, Peter swallowed his emotion 
audibly. And on his way back up town, he crossed himself 
a number of times, and muttered something which might 
have been either a curse or a prayer. 

He had seen the old door man blink suspiciously too, as 
he swung the door open for his employer, and he guessed 
that no man in New York was so much loved as was John 
Harrington. It was funny that she could be the only one 
who—who didn’t love him. Mother of Mary! But it was 
a strange world! 

Inside the factory John Harrington switched on a single 
set of lights and made his way to the time-keeper’s desk 
where he picked up a telephone and asked the operator for 
Edgar Van Kemp’s number. 

“How jolly of you to call me,” Estelle’s voice gurgled 
across the wire to him the moment he had announced him¬ 
self to her. “I’ve not been at all fit to-day nor for several 
days past. I think Kathryn’s neglect has sort of upset me. 
She hasn’t written a single line to me. And I can’t under¬ 
stand her running off like this—just when she had dis¬ 
covered that you were an earl, too. You know my heart 
is beastly bad and any little worry makes me frightfully 
ill” 

“Isn’t there something a doctor can do?” Harrington 
asked politely. 

“No. Oh, no! I’m not the kind to shift my burden to 


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another. Even Edgar is free to go his way and leave me 
to suffer alone. He is in Washington right now. Went 
down to see about making a law or breaking one or re¬ 
organizing the government or—something that has to do 
with these United States of America. It seems silly doesn’t 
it, to have laws made by commoners? Now if we could 
have a House of Lords and a-” 

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Van Kemp, has—my wife 
written to her uncle?” 

“My dear man!” ejaculated the little lady at the other 
end of the wire. “Edgar tells me simply nothing—nothing at 
all! If she’s written to him, he’s making the fact a secret. 
It does seem that a man who sees his wife so seldom—he’s 
been down to Washington twice in six months!—ought to 

treat her most tenderly. A lonely wife- Why do you 

know? I’ve not seen Edgar Van Kemp in years. Not 
since last Tuesday at dinner! What is the reason Kathryn 
went away? And why is she staying so long?” 

“I hope you will be feeling better,” said John Harrington 
irrelevantly. “Please ask Mr. Van Kemp to run down to 
Virginia and have a chat with—Kathryn. I myself am off 
to China. Be gone several months. Shall return in time 
for election. Goodbye.” 

Without waiting for the exclamations that were sure to 
follow this last remark he broke the connection, after which 
he made his way from floor to floor switching on an 
occasional light as he went. In the salesroom on the third 
floor he laid his hat and stick on a counter and wandered 
about moodily, pausing here and there to touch with caressing 
fingers the yellow head of a pink-cheeked doll, or to set into 
motion some new mechanical toy, or to inspect with remote 
curiosity an unfamiliar device for the entertainment of the 
world’s little men and women. 

For more than an hour he moved about in the semi-dark¬ 
ness, and only once did he let go the leash which kept his 



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mind on the toys. That once he had stopped before a golden¬ 
haired, blue-eyed doll and had stood with slant eyes closed 
and hands tightly clenched. Yet at the end of the hour 
courage seemed almost to have deserted him. He moved 
slowly down the center aisle of the vast show room, his 
long, sinewy hands hanging limp at his sides, his dark head 
bent forward, his chin upon his breast. 

Behind him the city of make-believe was wrapped in pro¬ 
found silence, as if in the midst of its heyday it had been 
paralyzed suddenly and without warning. The make-believe 
people and the make-believe beasts still held the attitudes in 
which they had been at that moment when the cataclysm 
came upon them, like the charred baker of Pompeii who 
for two thousand years has stood at the open door of his 
great oven in the act of removing therefrom a pan of cindered 
bread. 

A small gardener stood with lifted hoe. A straw-hatted 
farmer had a hand cupped to his mouth as though the great 
silence had overtaken him before he had quite finished call¬ 
ing his pigs. Brave little soldiers in shining helmets, held 
glistening bayonets aloft, or stood, as though listening ex¬ 
pectantly, behind mute cannon. A few ,of them held to their 
lips bugles that made no sound. A group of school children 
—kewpies, Buster Browns, fat little girls in sun bonnets, 
and ruddy cheeked boys in overalls—appeared to have be¬ 
come inanimate just as they had rushed pell mell out of a 
cardboard school house. 

Ships with spread sails were uncannily calmed. Pompous 
little locomotives were motionless, their whistles silent, their 
sooty faced engineers staring with unblinking eyes from tiny 
cab windows. A shaggy lion stood with open mouth, long 
teeth menacingly exposed, yet no roar came from the yawn¬ 
ing depths of his savage throat. A spotted leopard crouched 
for a spring to the back of a white tusked elephant but 
though the minutes passed, he remained where he was, and 


290 


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the elephant’s trunk stayed up-lifted as if his trumpeting 
had but just been arrested—peremptorily stilled. 

To John Harrington the strange silence of this crowded 
place spelled mystery. So many of his evenings had been 
spent wandering about through this strangely stilled city of 
make-believe people, with its fringing jungles and make-be¬ 
lieve beasts, and its green jute battlefields and make-believe 
soldiers. That these stilled things were active during the 
day only when somebody wound up their hidden springs, 
mattered not at all to the man who visited them in the 
night. He preferred to ignore those springs. Through the 
day his sales-speople might discuss mechanism—might treat 
all these things in the most prosaic and matter-of-fact way. 
What others saw in this make-believe world was of small 
interest to him. They could call all these beloved things 
toys, and laugh at the wide-eyed credulity of the occasional 
child who came to this show room under the escort of some 
prospective buyer. They were welcome to their skepticism. 
If in the gay little city, the tangled jungle and the counter¬ 
wide battlefields, they could see only stained jute, card board, 
glass eyes and sawdust, that was their misfortune. The 
nocturnal visitor saw something else. He endowed the place 
with life. Animation was merely suspended, it was not dead. 
To-morrow these things would dance and trumpet and 
whistle and roar and cry “mama” and “papa.” Tiny trains 
of cars would move on miniature tracks, the children in front 
of the school house would play Ring Around the Rosy, whole 
regiments of soldiers would move in perfect formation from 
one battlefield to another, and ships would sail on mirror 
seas. 

He was never an alien here—never unwelcome. He 
was on the most intimate terms with this entire little world, 
and he had names for most of its inhabitants. Sometimes on 
these nocturnal travels he would miss a favorite, and on the 
next day he would demand to be told why the “sample” had 


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disappeared, and he would insist that all orders be filled 
entirely from the warerooms. 

Here was a tranquillity that he never found elsewhere. 
Here was a world untroubled and serene. Even the soldiers 
lived happily on, despite their daily battles. Here were nc 
disappointments. No futile striving to attain the unattain¬ 
able. No covetousness. No conspiracies. No unrequited 
loves. Here was a swarthy-faced pirate who brandished a 
wicked looking cutlass, but the twinkle in his eyes belied the 
rest of his appearance. Here was the happy young hunter 
who was always just returning to his cottage with a “rabbit 
skin to wrap his baby-bunting in,” and always at the window 
was the golden-haired mama-doll who smiled tenderly out 
at him. 

So often had this sweet serenity made him forget the 
complications of the real world. So often had it calmed 
his own turmoil. Nowhere had John Harrington, toy-maker, 
financier, and man of mystery, been so well understood. It 
was only to these make-believe people that he confided his 
dreams, his yearnings, his sorrows and his despairs. In the 
world of real men his shy reserve passed for cold austerity. 
Out there he kept his heart closed and its secrets well hidden. 
He drew himself inside a shell with the exclusiveness of a 
dam. But here in this world of make-believe he opened his 
breast and bared his heart. Here was no idle curiosity— 
no prying—no questioning. He was accepted for whatever 
he seemed to be at the moment of contact, and justice wat, 
the only yardstick. For ever so long it had been known to 
this little world that he was born an earl, but the knowledge 
had made small change in its manner toward him. It did 
not fawn but went on grieving for him because it knew that 
the lady of his heart did not love him. It knew when she 
used to dance and flirt and go about a great deal with other 
men who called her the “toy-maker’s loveliest toy.” And it 
knew when she left him* It knew all about Wan Sing and 


292 


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the home in a distant land. It had listened with this man to 
the tinkle of pagoda bells and to the call of a silver flute, 
and it had dreamed with him of sweet scented gardens that 
were carpeted with windblown plum-blossoms. There was 
little about him it did not know and did not understand. 

To-night as he moved down the center aisle, head bent 
forward and eyes brooding, the little world seemed to be 
more than usually breathless. It was as though it had sensed 
the fact that he was going away and as though it felt doubt¬ 
ful of his return. Even the little tin soldiers appeared to be 
crestfallen and the swarthy-faced pirate less devil-may-care. 

And then quite suddenly a faint noise splintered across this 
silent little world! 

John Harrington stopped and turned his head mechan¬ 
ically. The muffled sound of footsteps sifted dully along 
the aisle down which he had come. Without thought or 
curiosity he moved slowly around and retraced his steps with 
the least possible noise. At the end of the dusky aisle he 
stopped short and caught at the edge of a counter. His 
face had gone white, his eyes had become coals of fire, his 
lips were pressed together as if to still a cry. 

Not four feet from where he stood was the slim graceful 
figure of the woman he had married. On the counter within 
reach of his hand, lay her hat, gloves and a gold mesh bag. 
Two slender arms were round the neck of old Leo—king 
of the jute jungle—and a small head that shimmered in the 
faint light like burnished gold, was pressed against the lion’s 
shaggy mane. She was crying softly like a child who has 
cried long and hard and is tired. 

“Wan Sing made me come,” she was saying in a small 
meek voice. “Do you know Wan Sing, lion?” She half 
lifted her head and one white hand fluttered moth-like about 
the shaggy mane. “He knows you. He’s made me want to 
know you, too. He’s downstairs now—our Wan Sing— 


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*93 


with the watchman. He’s waiting for me to come back 
and tell him what—what my sentence is. You see,” the 
golden head tilted a little to one side, “Wan Sing is a very 
great philosopher, and he’s made me understand that I have 
no right to—pronounce my own sentence—to choose my own 
punishment. Also that I’ve no right to make— him unhappy. 
Though I’m sure he’ll be most happy without me. He can’t 
help hating me, can he, lion? Has he ever told you what 
dreadful things I did to him? How scornful—I was of 
him?” 

The lion was frankly surprised. His round glass eyes 
stared appealingly at the man who leaned against the end of 
the center aisle counter. But John Harrington could neither 
speak nor move, he was as paralyzed as all the silent, in¬ 
animate things around him. 

“Wan Sing made me come,” she repeated. “And when 
they told us at the house that he was going away, we were 
scared. And all the way down here in the taxi, Wan Sing 
kept making me cry. But all the time he scolded he was 
pressing his face against my hands. Oh! lion! my pride 
is ashes at last! Wan Sing made incense of it! Last 
night we burned it on his little altar! And I—IVe come 

with humble heart to ask forgiveness. And if-” the tawny 

head drew back and two tear-dimmed eyes looked prayer¬ 
fully into the staring, glass ones, “if he sends me away 
again—I’ll die, and then—then there’ll never be a—little 
John Harrington to come here and play—with you . . . 

“I think—I think I’ve loved him always, only I didn’t 
know. Then suddenly—the other night—I understood. 

And-. Oh! Don’t you think that—maybe—when he 

sees how— humble I am—when he knows that I am glad 
about the—the little fellow who is—is going to have—his 
face and—and—a soul —he will want me to— stayt 

“If he—if he shouldn’t want me-” 


394 


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“But he does! He doesF Voice and animation had 
come back to John Harrington in a rush. The space that 
had been between him and the woman he had married, 
no longer separated them. The arms that had been limp 
and empty, closed round the slender figure of the girl 
who had bared her heart to a make-believe lion. The dark 
eyes with their peculiar slant and their long straight, black 
lashes, were no longer expressionless. They were pools of 
molten lava. The thin straight lips were trembling. 

“Plum-Blossom! My Plum-Blossom!” he cried vibrantly. 

And once more the perfume of her hair was in his nostrils! 

Kathryn twisted about in his arms until she could see his 
face. Her eyes met his, and instantly the old fascination 
held her, only now she understood it—could triumphantly 
call it by its right name. 

“John!” she whispered, something of the sweet calm of 
the little make-believe world settling upon her. “John!” 

She sighed. 

He smiled a twitching, half-weeping smile down into the 
upturned face. For a moment he did not speak. The 
muscles under his ivory skin moved convulsively. The clean 
mouth became a thin wavering line. The dark eyes, no 
longer full of baffling mystery, were wet as the swimming 
blue ones in whose depths lay undreamed-of promises. Then* 
there was a faint sound in his throat and slowly he bent his 
dark head. Her lips met his as they had on that spring 
morning when first she had felt the lure of him, and her 
two hands came up to his ivory face, where they fluttered 
against the lids of his half-closed eyes. 

“Listen!” she whispered when at last her lips were free. 
“Those stuffed birds in the cages over there! They are 
singing! Do you hear them?” 

John Harrington’s eyes glowed. 

“Then- Oh, my darling! They’re real to you, tool 


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29 $ 


And—I’ve wanted you—so much—to know this little world 
here . . . Some day—we’ll be bringing him here and-” 

“You know! And you’re—glad?” she asked softly, a 
little catch in her breath. 

John Harrington caught the slim fingers that were flutter¬ 
ing like rose petals about his face, and placed them under 
the edge of his loose tweed coat, where he pressed them al¬ 
most roughly against his pounding heart. 

“I know,” he said huskily. “I know. And only God 
can measure my gladness. It is the most marvelous thing 
that has ever happened in the world.” 

“But it has happened millions of times before,” Kathryn 
replied almost jealously. 

“Yes. Billions of times! But not to my Plum-Blossom! 
Not to my woman! Oh my darling! My darling!” His 
lips touched her tear-stained cheeks, her fragrant hair, her 
sweet red lips. “It was destined that I should find you. 
That you should be mine. Nothing can take you from me. 
Through all of life and all of death you are mine! Always 
and forever. My blood is in your veins, my child beneath 
your heart!” 

“Even my soul,” Kathryn whispered reverently, “you 
gave to me, John!” 

“No, dear. Your soul you had always. But it was 
sleeping. Suffering awakened it. Wan Sing trained it.” 

“Wan Sing!” she repeated softly. “He’s down stairs— 
waiting.” 

“Yes. I heard you tell Leo. I’ll telephone down to the 
watchman after a while, and ask him to send up to us our 
beloved little Pekinese.” 

Kathryn moved her head where it lay against the rough 
nveed shoulder, and looked wonderingly down the center 
aisle. 

“Wan Sing-” she began hesitatingly- “Wan Sing 

told me that—that sometimes—you sleep here.” 





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*96 

“Yes-” his voice breathed silkenly through tKe fluffed 

ripples of her shimmering hair. ‘Tve a sort of chamber here. 
It looks out over the harbor, and sometimes from its 
windows I can look across the seas to China-” 

“Where there’s a house with tiptilted eaves,” she inter¬ 
rupted breathlessly, turning her blue eyes back to him, “in 
which once lived a great Manchu and an orphaned little 
earl. And where there are willow-fringed rivers and swarms 
of sampans. Where there are wide fields of rice and twisted 
old trees and straight young bamboo. And where-” 

“Blossoms of the plum tree carpet the Manchu’s garden, 
and the humming birds drink from the larkspur!” he finished 
almost excitedly. “How did you know? How many times 
have you been there?” He cupped a hand under her small 
chin and lifted her face a little more to his. “How did you 
know?” he repeated wonderingly, joyously. 

“Wan Sing!” she replied mistily. “He’s taken me there 
every night at sun down. Every night for a month! I— 
I’ve come to love the distant boom of the temple bells, the 
whisper of coolie feet, and the smell of Hung Shu! Maybe, 
John—maybe in your room—by the windows you and I 
could-” 

“Would you? Would you come there and—dream with 
me for a moment?” 

“Is it-- Is your room-” she stopped, and a delicate 

flush spread over her lovely face and down her throat to 
the square cut neck of her dark blue traveling frock. 

“Is it—what, little Plum-Blossom?” His lips were close 
to her ear, his breast so tight to hers that scarcely could she 
distinguish the beat of her own heart from that of his. 

Kathryn lifted to him two eyes that were sweet with 
courage and shy, forced bravery. 

“Is it big enough for—for three? For you and—and me, 
and—the wee little fellow that’s close to my heart?” 

Her shoulders were caught in the grip of two powerful 



THE AUTOCRAT 


«97! 

hands, and once more the muscles went tense under the 
ivory skin of the face bent to hers. 

“Oh, my wonderful little mother-woman! My proud 
Lady Harrington at whose dainty feet I lay my all! You 
ask me to take you there! There to my plain little room 
that is so destitute of luxuries!” His breath came unevenly 
through his parted lips, his fingers dug deep into her flesh. 
“You would come?” he asked jerkily. “You would—come 
with me—there?” 

For answer Kathryn lifted her lips once more to his, and 
her eyes closed happily. 

“Take me,” she whispered. 

With infinite tenderness—with a gentle reverence akin to 
awe, John Harrington, earl, financier, nominee for mayor, 
maker of toys and breaker of trusts, gathered up in his long 
arms the one woman of his life, and with oblique dark eyes 
sending mute, triumphant messages across his world of make- 
believe, went softly, carefully toward the door at the far 
end of the center aisle. 

Kathryn lay very still in his arms like a little girl grown 
drowsy in toyland, but she was not asleep. She was beauti¬ 
fully, ecstatically awake. She hurt with happiness. Happi¬ 
ness was pounding in her heart. It was choking her throat. 
It was stinging her eyes to tears. 

She lifted a languid hand to the face pressed close to hers, 
and laid a finger across one of the dusky eyes. 

John Harrington paused. He would not risk walking 
blindly. In his arms he held his heaven and his earth, and 
he went cold at the thought of what might happen if he 
should stumble and fall with his delicately-bred little girl- 
mother. 

“What is it?” he asked softly. 

“Your eyes, John! I love their queer little slant. I 

love-Oh, John! I love you, just you —more than all the 

world!” 


THE AUTOCRAT 


298 

John Harrington kissed the warm red lips and his arms 
tightened almost fiercely around the treasure they carried. 
Then he leaned his shoulder against a door that gave to his 
touch, and—the three of them were alone in his plain little 
room from the windows of which one could look across the 
seas to China. 

Downstairs an old night watchman hung the receiver of 
the door telephone on its hook and turned to a small slant 
eyed boy. 

“His lordship, Mr. Harrington, says youse should go up 
to his house, and that him and her ladyship, Mrs. Harrington, 
will come up in the morning. His lordship, Mr. Harrington, 
says to tell you that you’ve managed things fine!” 

“Evelthing allee light?” Wan Sing’s face was shining 
like polished amber. 

“I ain’t guessing what was wrong. But if anything was— 
it’s all right now, from what his lordship, Mr. Harrington, 
says.” 

Wan Sing in the open door, tucked his tongue in one 
smooth cheek, his slant eyes upon a distant star. 

“Wan Sing,” he commented finally, as with overdone sang 
froid he hailed a passing taxi, “one glad fella.” 

And inside the taxi a sleepy little boy wondered vaguely 
why his beautiful lady and his very grand man had stayed 
down there in that funny old room at the rear of the factory, 
and why a lady grown up and married, should be forever 
making doll clothes. And—Mistel Hellington! Did he like 
to drink from the larkspur? And why had he fenced in with 
bamboo, a fat old negro woman! She was a nice old negro 
woman! She made delicious cookies! And she played a 

silver flute. Why—the sleepy little boy started- That 

was it! She was a river girl from Shanghai! 

And his saint in the chapel window—she had held him 
close in her arms last night and had told him that he was 
burning up her pride—though he —Wan Sing knew it was 


THE AUTOCRAT 


299 


only incense. And she had cried and kissed him, and called 
him her pilot. 

“Plide,” whispered the little Pekinese drowsily, “Plide, 
you not velly like Chlistian! But me—I flix you! Me and 
Buddha!” 


FINIS. 


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